en," he said unsteadily, "I wish you would grow up, and yet, Helen,
what a pity that you should change."

She did not answer; she might have been asleep, and he sat in a
stillness born of his disturbance at her nearness, her pale smooth skin,
her smooth brown hair, the young curves of her body. If he had moved, it
would have been to crush her beautiful, firm mouth, but her youth was a
chain wound round him, and though he was in bonds he seemed to be alive
for the first time. He and Helen were the sole realities. He could see
Miriam's figure, black against the sky as she stood or stooped to pick a
flower, but she had no meaning for him, and the voices of the young men,
not far off, might have been the droning of some late bee. The world was
a cup to hold him and this girl, and over that cup he had a feeling of
mastery and yet of helplessness, and all his past days dwindled to a
streak of drab existence. Life had begun, and it went at such a pace
that he did not know how much of it was already spent when Helen sat up,
and looking at him with drowsy eyes, asked, "What is happening?"

"There was magic abroad. The sun has been going down behind the moor,
and night is coming on. I must be going home."

"Don't go. Yes, it's getting dark. There will be stars soon. I love the
night. Don't go. How low the birds are flying. They are like big moths.
The magic hasn't gone."

Grey-gowned, grey-eyed, white-faced, he thought she was like a moth
herself, fragile and impalpable in the gloom, a moth motionless on a
flower, and when he saw her smile he thought the moth was making ready
for flight.

"I want this to go on for ever," she said. "The moor and the night and
you. You're such a friend--you and the Pinderwells. I don't know how I
should live without you."

"Do you know what you're saying to me?"

"I'm telling you I like you, and it's true. And you like me. It's so
comfortable to know that."

"Comfortable!"

"Isn't it?"

"Comfortable?" he said again. "Oh, my love--" He broke off, and looking
at each other, both fell dumb.

He got to his feet and looked down with an expression which was strange
to her, for into that moment of avowal there had come a fleeting
antagonism towards the woman who, in spite of all her gifts to him, had
taken his possession of himself: yet through his shamed resentment, he
knew that he adored her.

"Zebedee," she said in a broken voice. "Oh, isn't it a funny name!
Zebedee, don't look at me li