us in here from the dangers
of the cliffs and the old pier, or the boats in the harbour. The place
is just the same--only shrunk. The plaster from the walls is all
mouldering away, or you might see the pictures we used to draw upon them
with paint from the fishermen's paint pots. Down below they bring the
sand and grade it for the builders. They've carted away millions of tons
of sand from the foreshore in the last fifty years and will cart away
millions more, no doubt, for the sea always renews it."

She wandered with him and listened half-dreaming. The air for them was
electric with their love and they yearned for each other.

"I wish we could spend the whole blessed day in this little den
together," he said suddenly putting his arms round her; and that brought
her to some sense of reality, but none of danger. Not a tremor of peril
in his company had she ever felt, for did not perfect love cast out
fear, and why should a woman hesitate to trust herself with one, to
her, the most precious in the world?

He suggested dawdling awhile; but she would not.

"We are to eat our breakfast at Eype Beach," she reminded him, "and
that's a mile or two yet."

So they went on their way again, breasted the grassy cliffs westward of
the haven, admired the fog bank touched with gold that hung over the
river flats, praised Bridport wakening under its leafy woods, marked the
herons on the river mud in the valley and the sparrow-hawk poised aloft
above the downs. She took his arm up the hill and, like birds
themselves, they went lightly together, strong, lissome, radiant in
health and youth and the joy of a shared worship that made all things
sweet.

They talked of the great day when the world was to know their secret.
The secret itself proved so attractive to both that they agreed to keep
it a little longer. Their shared knowledge proved amusing and each told
the other of the warnings and advice and fears imparted by careful
friends of both sexes, who knew not the splendid truth.

How small the wisdom of the wise appeared--how peddling and foolish and
mean--contrasted with their superb trust. How sordid were the ways of
the world, its fears and suspicions, from the vantage point to which
they had climbed. Material things even suggested this thought to
Raymond, and when before noon, they stood on the green crown of Golden
Cap, with the earth and sea spread out around them in mighty harmonies
of blue and green, he told Sabina so.