In a few moments, almost before he could reach her, she was rising, and when she got up she supported herself against the open door, standing in the moonlight.  If he was pale, she was pale also, and her large eyes would not move from his face, so drawing him that he could not keep away from her.

“Listen,” he broke out suddenly.  “Penzance told me—­warned me—­that some time a moment would come which would be stronger than all else in a man—­than all else in the world.  It has come now.  Let me take you home.”

“Than what else?” she said slowly, and became even paler than before.

He strove to release himself from the possession of the moment, and in his struggle answered with a sort of savagery.

“Than scruple—­than power—­even than a man’s determination and decent pride.”

“Are you proud?” she half whispered quite brokenly.  “I am not—­since I waited for the ringing of the church bell—­since I heard it toll.  After that the world was empty—­and it was as empty of decent pride as of everything else.  There was nothing left.  I was the humblest broken thing on earth.”

“You!” he gasped.  “Do you know I think I shall go mad directly perhaps it is happening now.  You were humble and broken—­your world was empty!  Because——?”

“Look at me, Lord Mount Dunstan,” and the sweetest voice in the world was a tender, wild little cry to him.  “Oh look at me!”

He caught her out-thrown hands and looked down into the beautiful passionate soul of her.  The moment had come, and the tidal wave rising to its height swept all the common earth away when, with a savage sob, he caught and held her close and hard against that which thudded racing in his breast.

And they stood and swayed together, folded in each other’s arms, while the wind from the marshes lifted its voice like an exulting human thing as it swept about them.

CHAPTER XLIX

AT STORNHAM AND AT BROADMORLANDS

The exulting wind had swept the clouds away, and the moon rode in a dark blue sea of sky, making the night light purely clear, when they drew a little apart, that they might better see the wonderfulness in each other’s faces.  It was so mysteriously great a thing that they felt near to awe.

“I fought too long.  I wore out my body’s endurance, and now I am quaking like a boy.  Red Godwyn did not begin his wooing like this.  Forgive me,” Mount Dunstan said at last.

“Do you know,” with lovely trembling lips and voice, “that for long—­long—­you have been unkind to me?”

It was merely human that he should swiftly enfold her again, and answer with his lips against her cheek.

“Unkind!  Unkind!  Oh, the heavenly woman’s sweetness of your telling me so—­the heavenly sweetness of it!” he exclaimed passionately and low.  “And I was one of those who are ‘by the roadside everywhere,’ an unkempt, raging beggar, who might not decently ask you for a crust.”