Accordingly, remounting in order, they filed off down the hillside.  Scraps of talk came floating back from one to another.  There were jokes to begin with, and laughter; some walked part of the way, and picked flowers, and sent stones bounding before them.

“Who writes the best Latin verse in your college, Hirst?” Mr. Elliot called back incongruously, and Mr. Hirst returned that he had no idea.

The dusk fell as suddenly as the natives had warned them, the hollows of the mountain on either side filling up with darkness and the path becoming so dim that it was surprising to hear the donkeys’ hooves still striking on hard rock.  Silence fell upon one, and then upon another, until they were all silent, their minds spilling out into the deep blue air.  The way seemed shorter in the dark than in the day; and soon the lights of the town were seen on the flat far beneath them.

Suddenly some one cried, “Ah!”

In a moment the slow yellow drop rose again from the plain below; it rose, paused, opened like a flower, and fell in a shower of drops.

“Fireworks,” they cried.

Another went up more quickly; and then another; they could almost hear it twist and roar.

“Some Saint’s day, I suppose,” said a voice.  The rush and embrace of the rockets as they soared up into the air seemed like the fiery way in which lovers suddenly rose and united, leaving the crowd gazing up at them with strained white faces.  But Susan and Arthur, riding down the hill, never said a word to each other, and kept accurately apart.

Then the fireworks became erratic, and soon they ceased altogether, and the rest of the journey was made almost in darkness, the mountain being a great shadow behind them, and bushes and trees little shadows which threw darkness across the road.  Among the plane-trees they separated, bundling into carriages and driving off, without saying good-night, or saying it only in a half-muffled way.

It was so late that there was no time for normal conversation between their arrival at the hotel and their retirement to bed.  But Hirst wandered into Hewet’s room with a collar in his hand.

“Well, Hewet,” he remarked, on the crest of a gigantic yawn, “that was a great success, I consider.”  He yawned.  “But take care you’re not landed with that young woman. . . .  I don’t really like young women. . . .”

Hewet was too much drugged by hours in the open air to make any reply.  In fact every one of the party was sound asleep within ten minutes or so of each other, with the exception of Susan Warrington.  She lay for a considerable time looking blankly at the wall opposite, her hands clasped above her heart, and her light burning by her side.  All articulate thought had long ago deserted her; her heart seemed to have grown to the size of a sun, and to illuminate her entire body, shedding like the sun a steady tide of warmth.

“I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy,” she repeated.  “I love every one.  I’m happy.”