m. Oh, where
was this softness bearing her--this emptiness of all will, of all
individual power? She hid her eyes with her other hand, struggling to
recall that far away moment in Marrisdale. But the mind refused to
work. Consciousness seemed to retain nothing but the warm grasp of his
hand--the tones of his voice.

He saw her struggle, and pressed on remorselessly.

'Speak to me--say one little kind word. Oh, you cannot send me away
miserable and empty!'

She turned to him, and laid her trembling free hand on his arm. He
clasped them both with rapture.

'Give me a little time.'

'No, no,' he said, and it almost seemed to her that he was smiling:
'time for you to escape me again my wild mountain bird; time for you to
think yourself and me into all sorts of moral mists! No, you shall not
have it. Here--alone with God and the dark--bless me or undo me. Send
me out to the work of life maimed and sorrowful, or send me out your
knight, your possession, pledged--'

But his voice failed him. What a note of youth, of imagination, of
impulsive eagerness there was through it all! The more slowly moving,
inarticulate nature was swept away by it. There was but one object clear
to her in the whole world of thought or sense, everything else had sunk
out of sight--drowned in a luminous mist.

He rose and stood before her as he delivered his ultimatum, his tall
form drawn up to its full height. In the east, across the valley, above
the farther buttress of High Fell, there was a clearer strip of sky,
visible for a moment among the moving storm-clouds, and a dim haloed
moon shone out in it. Far away a white-walled cottage glimmered against
the fell: the pools at their feet shone in the weird, passing light.

She lifted her head, and looked at him, still irresolute. Then she too
rose, and helplessly, like someone impelled by a will not her own, she
silently held out to him two white, trembling hands.

'Catherine--my angel--my wife!'

There was something in the pale, virginal grace of look and form which
kept his young passion in awe. But he bent his head again over those
yielded hands, kissing them with dizzy, unspeakable joy.

* * * * * * * * * * *

About twenty minutes later Catherine and Robert, having hurried back
with all speed from the top of Shanmoss, reached the farmhouse door.
She knocked. No one answered. She tried the lock; it yielded, and
they entered. No one in the kitchen. She looked disturbed and
conscience-