“You will not go?” Mechanically he drew the white hand nearer his thumping heart.

“I must,” she faltered piteously.

“You will not go?”

“Oh yes! yes!”

“Tell me.  Do you wish to go?”

The question was a subtle one.  A moment or two she did not answer, and then forswore herself, and said, Yes.

“Do you—­you wish to go?” He looked with quivering eyelids under hers.

A fainter Yes responded.

“You wish—­wish to leave me?” His breath went with the words.

“Indeed I must.”

Her hand became a closer prisoner.

All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her frame.  From him to her it coursed, and back from her to him.  Forward and back love’s electric messenger rushed from heart to heart, knocking at each, till it surged tumultuously against the bars of its prison, crying out for its mate.  They stood trembling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair heavens of the morning.

When he could get his voice it said, “Will you go?”

But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend upward her gentle wrist.

“Then, farewell!” he said, and, dropping his lips to the soft fair hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her, ready for death.

Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him.  Strange, that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought blushes and timid tenderness to his side, and the sweet words, “You are not angry with me?”

“With you, O Beloved!” cried his soul.  “And you forgive me, fair charity!”

“I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you again,” she said, and again proffered her hand.

The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him.  The gracious glory of heaven fell upon his soul.  He touched her hand, not moving his eyes from her, nor speaking, and she, with a soft word of farewell, passed across the stile, and up the pathway through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of the arch of the light, away from his eyes.

And away with her went the wild enchantment.  He looked on barren air.  But it was no more the world of yesterday.  The marvellous splendours had sown seeds in him, ready to spring up and bloom at her gaze; and in his bosom now the vivid conjuration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes them leap and illumine him like fitful summer lightnings ghosts of the vanished sun.

There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love and declaring it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it.  Soft flushed cheeks! sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of softest fire! how could his ripe eyes behold you, and not plead to keep you?  Nay, how could he let you go?  And he seriously asked himself that question.

To-morrow this place will have a memory—­the river and the meadow, and the white falling weir:  his heart will build a temple here; and the skylark will be its high-priest, and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of dewberries.  To-day the grass is grass:  his heart is chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere.  Only when the most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does he taste a moment’s calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives place to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his for ever.