“Come on,” he ordered her, and lifted her over the tangle of wires.  They walked forward, again on the hilltop’s unscreened edge.  The harbour was hidden by the elms, but below lay the frosted marsh and islands, girdled by the glistening sea-walls and their coal black shadows, and great wide Kerith, its expanse jewelled here and there by the lights of homesteads.  It was beautiful, but she did not say anything about it to Richard, who was walking on ahead, though there did not seem any reason why they should walk in single file, for the ground was level and the grass short.  There was indeed a suavity about this place which was not to be found in fields or commons.  The line of trees towards which they were going was only a spur of a dense wood that stretched inland, and light from some moonflooded place beyond outlined their winter-naked bodies and showed them beautiful with a formal afforested grace.

“Is this a park?” she whispered, running forward to his side.

“Yes.  My father’s park.”

“Oh!” she breathed in surprise; then, flaming up in loyalty, cried:  “What a shame it isn’t yours!”

He made an exclamation of anger and disgust, and said coldly:  “Can’t you understand that I am glad that nothing which was his is mine?”

Meekly she murmured:  “That’s natural, that’s natural,” and fell behind.

They passed the lacy clump of withered bracken, casting a shadow much more substantial than itself, which was the last dwindled outpost of the screen of trees; and Richard hissed over his shoulder, “Hush!” though she had not spoken.  But nothing could spoil this.  The silver forest waited in a half circle round a clearing that looked marshy with moonbeams; and in the centre of the arc, set forward from the trees, shone a small temple, looking out to sea.  It had four white pillars, which were vague with excessive light, columns of gleaming mist; and these upheld a high pediment, covered with deep stone mouldings which cast such shadows and received such brightness that it looked like a rich casket chased by some giant jeweller.  That it should last longer than a sigh did not seem possible.

But it endured, it endured; until the urgent advocacy of romance which was somehow inherent in its beauty, and which was not likely to be fulfilled, caused an ache.  She caught her breath in a sob.

“You think it beautiful?” asked Richard, close to her ear.

“Oh, yes!  Oh, yes!”

“I had a summer-house in that villa of mine at Rio,” he said, hotly and defiantly, “which was just like this, but much more beautiful.”

He stepped forward and began to move towards the temple with that air of stalking a quarry.  She followed him wearily, feeling that it was not right that they should have come here like this.  They should have come in some different way.  At each step the temple grew higher before them, more candid, more immaculate, but its beauty did not soften his inexorable aspect.  When they could see the pale wedges which the moon drove in between the columns he paused and stared, and drew from his pocket something dark which lay easily in his hand.  “What’s that?  What’s that?” she asked in panic.  “Only an electric torch,” he muttered, without surprise at her suspicion, and went with springing, silent, detective gait up the three steps of the temple.