“How late you are!” he said, not reproachfully, but in relief that she should have come at all.  “I thought you must have changed your mind.  Do you know it is past eleven?”

“Have I been as long as that?” Blanche hugged herself to think that she had been so genuinely wrapped in dreams as to let so much time slip by unheeded.  Together they went down the moonlit field, where the arishmows seemed like the pavilions of a long-dead Arthurian host conjured up by some magician’s spells.  In the last field before the moor Ishmael pulled the corn out lavishly as a throne for her and installed her on it.

“You look like the spirit of harvest sitting there on your golden throne,” he told her, and, leaning back against the rustling stook, she smiled mysteriously at him, all the glamour of the moonlight and her own womanhood in her half-shut eyes.

“Blanche ...!”

He was kneeling beside her, his hands on her shoulders.  Her eyelids dropped before his gaze and she shook slightly.

“You are the most beautiful thing on earth!  I love you with all my heart and soul, with every bit of me.  Say you can care—­Blanche, say you can...!”

She raised her eyes:  the sphinx-like look of her level brows and calm mouth held for an instant, then her face quivered, grew tremulous and tender.  Her hands made a blind, passionate movement, and as he caught her to him he heard her sobbing that she loved him.

He held her close, covering her face with clumsy eager kisses, the first he had ever given a woman, and he gave himself up to worshipping her as she sat on the throne he had made for her.

“Let us go to the boulders above the wood,” whispered Blanche, who even in the grip of one of the deepest feelings of her life kept her unfailing flair for the right background; “we can see the sun rise there, over the trees....”

He helped her to her feet and they walked together, hand in hand, like children.  The keen personal emotion had passed, leaving them almost timid; now certainty had settled on them passionate inquiry gave place to peace.  So they went, and he felt as though he walked in Eden, with the one mate in all the world.  Across the moors they went; then—­for they were going inland—­they came to fields again, and the path ran through acres of cabbages.  The curves of the grey-green leaves held the light in wide shimmers of silver, the dew vibrating with diamond colours; edging their two shadows the refraction of the beams brought a halo of brightest white.  Another stretch of furze brought them to the boulders above the wood on a level with the massed tree-tops.  Ishmael made Blanche put on his coat; then he sat beside her, his hand holding the coat together under her chin.

Nestling her head against him, she closed her eyes, and with soft, regular breathings feigned a sleep that presently became reality.  Through the starlit hour between moon-setting and sun-rising Ishmael held her; every now and then she stirred, half woke, and, moving a little to ease his arm, lifted the pallor of her face to his.  Before the dawn she awoke completely and began to reproach herself and him.