They walked slowly back towards the farm, and again the gods were kind to them; for they forgot how short their time was, how quickly such moments fly.  Much that they had to say to each other may not be expressed on paper, neither can any compositor set it up in type.

They were practical enough, however, and as they walked beneath the snow-clad pines they drew up a scheme of life which was astonishingly unlike the dreams and aspirations of most lovers.  For it was devoid of selfishness, and they looked for happiness—­not in an immediate gratification of all their desires and an instant fulfilment of their hopes, but in a mutual faith that should survive all separation and bridge the longest span of years.  Loyalty was to be their watchword.  Loyalty to self, to duty, and to each other.

Wanda did not, like the heroine of a novel, look for a passion that should stride over every obstacle to its object, that should ignore duty, which is only another word for honor, and throw down the spectres, Foresight, Common-sense, Respect, which must arise in the pathway of that madness, a brief passion.  She was content, it seemed, that her lover should be wise, should be careful for the future, should take her life into his hands with a sort of quiet mastery as if he had a right to do so—­a right, not to ruin and debase, such as is usually considered the privilege of that which is called a great passion and admired as such—­but a right to shape, guard, and keep.

Cartoner had not much to say about his own feelings, which, perhaps, made him rather different from most lovers.  He went so far as to consider the feelings of others and to place them before his own, which, of course, is quite unusual.  And yet the scheme of life which was his reading of Love, and which Wanda extracted from him that sunny March morning and pieced together bit by bit in her own decided and conclusive way, seemed to content her.  She seemed to gather from it that he loved her precisely as she wished to be loved, and that, come what might, she had already enough to make her life happier than the lives of most women.

And, of course, they hoped.  For they were young, and human, and the spring was in the air.  But their hope was one of those things of which they could not speak; for it involved knowledge of which Wanda had become possessed at the hand of the prince and Martin and Kosmaroff.  It touched those things which Cartoner had come to Poland to learn, but not from Wanda.

The smell of the wood-smoke from the chimneys of the farm told them that they were nearing the edge of the forest, and Wanda stopped short.

“You must not go any nearer,” she said.  “You are sure no one saw you when you came?”

“No one,” answered Cartoner, whom fortune had favored as he came.  For he had approached the farm through the wood, and he had seen Wanda’s footsteps in the snow.  He had often ridden over the same ground on the very horse which he was now riding, and knew every inch of the way to Warsaw.  He could get there without being seen, might even quit the city again unobserved.