When they finished, Leila telephoned to her father that she had arrived at Rockville and was safe.  If her voice wavered a little as she said it, if her eyes filled at the trustfulness of his affectionate response, these things were soon forgotten, as Barry caught up her little bag, and they left the station, and started over the hills in search of happiness.

The way was rather long, but they had thought it best to avoid trolley or train or much-traveled roads, lest they be recognized.  And so it came about that they crossed fields, and slipped through the edges of groves, and when the twilight fell Little-Lovely Leila danced along the way, and Barry danced, too, until the moon came up round and gold above the blackness of the distant hills.

Once they came to a stream that was like silver, and once they passed through a ghostly orchard with budding branches, and once they came to a farmhouse where a dog barked at them, and the dog and the orchard and the budding trees and the stream all seemed to be saying: 

“You are running away—–­you are running away.”

And now they had walked a mile, and there was yet another.

“But what’s a mile?” said Barry, and Little-Lovely Leila laughed.

She wore a frock of pale yellow, with a thick warm coat of the same fashionable color.  Her hat was demurely tied under her little chin with black velvet ribbons.  She was like a primrose of the spring—­and Barry kissed her.

“May I tell Dad, when I get home to-morrow night?” she asked.

“We’ll wait until Sunday.  April Fool’s Day, Leila.  We’ll tell him, and he will think it’s a joke.  And when he sees how happy we are, he will know we were right.”

So like children they refused to let the thought of the future mar the joy of the present.

Once they rested on a fallen log in a little grove of trees.  The wind had died down, and the air was warm, with the still warmth of a Southern spring.  Between the trees they could see a ribbon of white road which wound up to a shadowy church.

“The minister’s house is next to the church,” Barry told her; “in a half hour from now you’ll be mine, Leila.  And no one can take you away from me.”

In the wonder of that thought they were silent for a time, then: 

“How strange it will seem to be married, Barry.”

“It seems the most natural thing in the world to me.  But there will be those who will say I shouldn’t have let you.”

“I let myself.  It wasn’t you.  Did you want my heart to break at your going, Barry?”

For a moment he held her in his arms, then he kissed her, gently, and let her go.  When they came back this way, she would be his wife.

The old minister asked few questions.  He believed in youth and love; the laws of the state were lenient.  So with the members of his family for witnesses, he declared in due time that this man and woman were one, and again they went forth into the moonlight.