With the final cadence, the last sugared word, the ivy sprays somewhat darkened against the eastern sky.  His fancy being yet aloft, he turned that he might behold the light upon the downs, and then he saw Damaris Sedley where she stood upon the lowest of the ruined steps, stiller than the flower beside her, and with something rich and strange in her bearing and her dress.  Cloth of silver sheathed her body, while the flowing sleeves that half revealed, half hid her white and rounded arms were of silver tissue over watchet blue, and of watchet was the mantle which she had let fall upon the step beside her.  A net of wire of gold crossing her hair that was but half confined, held high above her forehead a golden star.  In one hand she bore a silvered spear well tipped with gold, the other she pressed above her heart.  Her face was pale and grave, her scarlet lip between her teeth, her dark eyes intent upon the man before her.

Ferne sprang to his feet and started forward, very white, his arm outstretched and trembling, crying to her if she were spirit merely.  She shook her head, regarding him gravely, her hand yet upon her heart.  “I attend the Queen upon her progress,” she said.  “This day at the Earl’s there is a great masque of Dian and her huntresses, satyrs, fauns, all manner of sylvan folk.  At last I might steal aside unmissed....  By the favor of a friend I rode here through the quiet lanes, for I wished to see you face to face, to speak to you—­to you who gave me no answer when I wrote, and wrote again!...  I am weary with the joys of this day.  May I rest upon yonder seat?”

He moved backward before her, slowly, across the grass-plot to the bench of stone, and she followed him.  Their gaze met the while.  There was no wonder in his look, no consciousness of self in hers.  In the spaces beyond life their souls might meet thus; each drawing by the veil, each recognizing the other for what it was.  They took their seat upon the wide stone bench, with the primroses at their feet, and above them the empurpling arch of the sky.  Throughout the past months, when he dreamed of her, when he thought of her, he bowed himself before her, he raised not his eyes to hers.  But now their looks met, and his countenance of a haggard and ravaged beauty did not change before her still regard.  The floating silver gauze of her open sleeve lying upon the stone between them he lightly, with no pressure that she might notice, let rest his hand upon it.  In the act of doing this he wondered at himself, but then he thought, “I am on my way to death....”

She was the first to speak.

“Seven months have gone since that day at Whitehall.”

“Ay,” he answered, “seven months.”

She went on:  “I have learned not to reckon life that way.  Since that day at Whitehall life has lasted a very long time.”

Again he echoed—­“A very long time.”  Then, after a pause:  “I have made for you a long, long life.  If to have done so is to your irreparable loss, then this, also, is to be forgiven....  Long life! now in the watches of one night I live to be an old man!  For you may forgetfulness come at last!”