n the world but darkness wild with dew and starlight. He
reached up and lifted her down into the boat, and the scent of some
flower pressed against his face seemed to pierce into him and reach his
very heart, awakening the memory of something past, forgotten. Then,
seizing the branches, snapping them in his haste, he dragged the skiff
along through the sluggish water, the gnats dancing in his face. She
seemed to know where he was taking her, and neither of them spoke a
single word, while he pulled out into the open, and over to the far
bank.

There was but one field between them and the wood--a field of young
wheat, with a hedge of thorn and alder. And close to that hedge they
set out, their hands clasped. They had nothing to say yet--like children
saving up. She had put on her cloak to hide her dress, and its silk
swished against the silvery blades of the wheat. What had moved her to
put on this blue cloak? Blue of the sky, and flowers, of birds' wings,
and the black-burning blue of the night! The hue of all holy things! And
how still it was in the late gleam of the sun! Not one little sound of
beast or bird or tree; not one bee humming! And not much colour--only
the starry white hemlocks and globe-campion flowers, and the low-flying
glamour of the last warm light on the wheat.

XX

. . . Now over wood and river the evening drew in fast. And first the
swallows, that had looked as if they would never stay their hunting,
ceased; and the light, that had seemed fastened above the world, for all
its last brightenings, slowly fell wingless and dusky.

The moon would not rise till ten! And all things waited. The creatures
of night were slow to come forth after that long bright summer's day,
watching for the shades of the trees to sink deeper and deeper into the
now chalk-white water; watching for the chalk-white face of the sky to
be masked with velvet. The very black-plumed trees themselves seemed to
wait in suspense for the grape-bloom of night. All things stared, wan in
that hour of passing day--all things had eyes wistful and unblessed.
In those moments glamour was so dead that it was as if meaning had
abandoned the earth. But not for long. Winged with darkness, it stole
back; not the soul of meaning that had gone, but a witch-like and
brooding spirit harbouring in the black trees, in the high dark spears
of the rushes, and on the grim-snouted snags that lurked along the river
bank. Then the owls came out, and nig