“Yes,” replied Mysie, her face flushing slightly as she remembered the incident, and how Peter had been chosen, when her heart told her to choose Robert.

“Oh, well,” said Peter, “I suppose we can’t help these things.  Fate wills it.  Let’s forget all about such unpleasant things.  It’s a lovely night.  We might go round by the wood.  It’s not so late yet,” and putting Mysie’s arm in his, he turned off into the little pathway that skirted the wood, and she, caught by the glamor of the gloaming, as well as flattered by his attentions, acquiesced.

Plaintive and eerie the moor-birds protested against this invasion of their haunts.  The moon came slowly up over the eastern end of the moor, flinging a silver radiance abroad, and softening the shadows cast by the hills.  A strange, dank smell rose from the mossy ground—­the scent of rotting heather and withered grass, mixed with the beautiful perfume from beds of wild thyme.

A low call came from a brooding curlew, a faint sigh from a plover, and the wild rasping cry of a lapwing greeted them overhead.  Yet there was a silence, a silence broken for a moment by the cries of the birds, but a silence thick and heavy.  Between the calls of the birds Mysie could almost hear her heart’s quickened beat.  Blood found an eager response, and the magic of the moonlight and the beauty of the night soon wrought upon the excited minds of the pair.  Mysie looked in Peter’s eyes more desirable than ever.  The moonlight on her face, the soft light within her eyes, her shy, downcast look, and the touch of her arm on his charmed him.

“There are some things, Mysie, more desirable than the winning of the Red Hose,” he said after a time, looking sideways at her, and placing his hand upon hers, which had been resting upon his arm.  “Don’t you think so?”

“I dinna ken,” she answered simply, a strange little quiver running through her as she spoke.

“Isn’t this better than anything else, just to be happy with everything so peaceful?  Just you and I together, happy in each other’s company.”

“Ay,” she answered again, a faint little catch in her voice, her heart a-tremble, and her eyes moist and shining.  Then silence again, while they slowly strayed through the heather towards the little wooded copse, and Mysie felt that every thump of her heart must be heard at the farthest ends of the earth.  Chased by the winds of passion raging within him, discretion was fast departing from Peter, leaving him more and more a prey to impulse and the unwearying persistence of the fever of love that was consuming him.

“Listen, Mysie, I read a song yesterday.  It’s the sort of thing I’d have written about you: 

  “In the passionate heart of the rose,
    Which from life its deep ardor is feeing. 
  And lifts its proud head to disclose
    Its immaculate beauty and being. 
  I can see your fine soul in repose,
    With an eye lit with love and all-seeing,
  In the passionate heart of the rose,
    All athrob with its beauty of being.”