The time of un-self-consciousness was already over for her, and she was once more the woman who knew how to make men love.

“Oh, how could you let me waste time sleeping?  I’ve not been really asleep—­only drowsing.  I knew I was sitting beside you all the while.”

“Then it wasn’t waste for you either.”  His lips trembled a little, and he said nothing about his own emotions; it had been so unutterably sweet to him to hold her, trusting, quiescent, in his arms and feel the night-wind ruffling her hair against his cheek.

It was still dusk, though the misty blue-grey of the tree-tops was imperceptibly changing to a more living hue, and the sky, stained a deep rust colour, showed a molten whiteness where it touched the world’s rim.  He unknowingly gripped Blanche’s hand till she nearly cried out; except as something that made beauty more beautiful he hardly knew she was there.  Slowly the miracle of dawn unfolded; down in the woods birds lifted glad heads, the lids were raised from round, bright eyes, and there came up to the watchers on the rocks the first faint notes that pierced the air of the new day.

Nothing was very wide-awake as yet; all life stirred as though beneath a film; a dim blue coverlet still lay lightly over the wood; the earth held her breath for the moment of birth.  What a waiting, what a wide clear sense of certain expectation!  The sky, naked of clouds, had become a brightening sphere of pearliness; a deep rose gathered over the hills and spread fanlike, licking up the ashen pallor with stabs of flame.  A livid red-gold rim sprang into being behind the hill crests, and slowly and in state the sun swam up the molten sky.  He turned to Blanche with the tears in his eyes.

“Dearest, the sun has risen!” He drew her face to his and kissed her, not as before, but with the sense of consummating a sacrament.  She rose to her feet a little unsteadily, and they set their faces towards Paradise cottage.

“You must get some rest,” he said; “it’s only half-past four now.”

The exaltation of the dawn had left her, and she quickened her steps, wondering uneasily what her skin looked like unaided in this dazzling light.  She slipped noiselessly into the house by the front door, which she barred behind her; the clatter of hobnails from the little yard told that Billy was already about his business, but behind Mrs. Penticost’s door all was quiet.  With her finger to her lips Blanche leaned from her window and breathed “Good-night” and disappeared into the shadows.

CHAPTER XII

SHEAVES