She knew that she was not the one; but to the other distinction she certainly fancied that she had the superior claim.  And she had never yet come behind him in appreciation of Edith.  Besides, she was hurt at being spoken to in that way on her birthday.

Her resentment faded when she found him standing at the foot of the stairs by Edith’s door, waiting for her.  He looked up at her as she descended, and his eyes brightened with pleasure at the sight.

Edith was charmed with their plan.  It might have been conceived as an exquisite favour to herself, by the fine style in which she handled it.

They set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket and Anne’s coat.  He had changed, and appeared in the Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and cap he had worn at Scarby.  The pang that struck her at the sight of them was softened by her practical perception of their fitness for the adventure.  They became him, too, and she had memory of the charm he had once worn for her with that open-air attire.

An hour’s journey by rail brought them to the little wayside station.  They turned off the high road, walked for ten minutes across an upland field, and came to the bridle-path that led down into the beech-woods of Westleydale, in the heart of the hills.

They followed a mossy trail.  The shade fell thin, warm, and coloured, from leaves so tender that the light passed through their half-transparent panes.  Overhead there was the delicate scent of green things and of sap, and underfoot the deep smell of moss and moistened earth.

Anne drew the deep breath of delight.  She took off her hat and gloves, and moved forward a few steps to a spot where the wood opened and the vivid light received her.  Majendie hung back to look at her.  She turned and stood before him, superb and still, shrined in a crescent of tall beech stems, column by column, with the light descending on the fine gold of her hair.  Nothing in Anne even remotely suggested a sylvan and primeval creature; but, as she stood there in her temperate and alien beauty, she seemed to him to have yielded to a brief enchantment.  She threw back her head, as if her white throat drank the sweet air like wine.  She held out her white hands, and let the warmth play over them palpably as a touch.

And Majendie longed to take her by those white hands and draw her to him.  If he could have trusted her; but some instinct plucked him backward, saying to him:  “Not yet.”

A mossy rise under a beech-tree offered itself to Anne as a suitable throne for the regal woman that she was.  He spread out her coat, and she made room for him beside her.  He sat for a long time without speaking.  The powers which were working that day for Majendie gave to him that subtle silence.  He had, at most times, an inexhaustible capacity for keeping still.

Above them, just discernible through the tree-tops, veiled by a gauze of dazzling air, the hill brooded in its majestic dream.  Its green arms, plunging to the valley, gathered them and shut them in.