He reached after it as he spoke, and then they went on; and by the help of his hand her backward journey over rocks, stones, and trunks of trees in the path, was easily and lightly made; till they reached the little bit of meadow.  Which backward journey Elizabeth accomplished in about two minutes and a quarter.  There Winthrop transferred to his arm the hand that had rested in his, and walked more leisurely.

“Are you in such a hurry for your breakfast?” said he.  “I have had mine.”

“Had it! —­ before you came out?”

“No,” —­ said he smiling, —­ “since.”

“Are you laughing at me? —­ or have you had it?” said Elizabeth looking puzzled.

“Both,” said Winthrop.  “What are you trembling so for?”

It hushed Elizabeth again, till they got quit of the meadow, and began more slowly still, the ascent of the rough half-made wheel-road.

“Miss Haye —­” said Winthrop gently.

She paused in her walk, looking at him.

“What are you thinking of?”

“Thinking of! —­”

“Yes.  You don’t look as happy as I feel.”

“I am,” —­ she said.

“How do you know?”

What a colour spread over Elizabeth’s face!  But she laughed too, so perhaps his end was gained.

“I was thinking,” she said, with the desperate need of saying something, —­ “a little while ago, when you were helping me through the woods, —­ how a very few minutes before, I had been so quite alone in the world.”

“Don’t forget there is one arm that never can fail you,” he replied gravely.  “Mine may.”

Elizabeth looked at him rather timidly, and his face changed.

“There was no harm in that,” he said, with so bright an expression as she had never before seen given to her.  “What will you say, if I tell you that I myself at that same time was thinking over in my mind very much the same thing —­ with relation to myself, I mean.”

Elizabeth’s heart beat and her breath came short.  That was what she had never thought of.  Like many another woman, what he was to her, she knew well; what she might be to him, it had never entered her head to think.  It seemed almost a new and superfluous addition to her joy, yet not superfluous from that time forth for ever.  Once known, it was too precious a thought to be again untasted.  She hung her head over it; she stepped all unwittingly on rocks and short grass and wet places and dry, wherever she was led.  It made her heart beat thick to think she could be so valued.  How was it possible!  How she wished —­ how keenly —­ that she could have been of the solid purity of silver or gold, to answer the value put upon her.  But instead of that —­ what a far-off difference!  Winthrop could not know how great, or he would never have said that, or felt it; nor could he.  What about her could possibly have attracted it?