s because I love you so," he answered in his compelling boy voice,
holding her gently. "Don't move--don't move! There is no time to think
and wait--or care for anything--if we love each other. We _do_ love each
other, don't we?" He put his cheek against hers and pressed it there.
"Oh, say we do," he begged. "There is no time. And listen to the skylark
singing!"

The butterfly-wing flutter of her lashes against his cheek as she
pressed the softness of her own closer, and the quick exquisite
indrawing of her tender, half-sobbing childish breath were unspeakably
lovely answering things--though he heard her whisper.

"Yes, Donal! Donal!" And again, "Donal! Donal!"

And he held her closer and kissed her very gently again. And they sat
and whispered that they loved each other and had always loved each other
and would love each other forever and forever and forever. Poor enrapt
children! It has been said before, but they said it again and yet again.
And the circling skylark seemed to sing at the very gates of God's
heaven.

So the tide rose to its high flowing.

CHAPTER VII

The days of gold which linked themselves one to another with strange
dawns of pearl and exquisite awakenings, each a miracle, the gemmed
night whose blue darkness seemed studded with myriads of new stars, the
noons whose heats or rains were all warm scents of flowers and fragrant
mists, wrought themselves into a chain of earthly beauty. The hour in
which the links must break and the chain end was always a faint spectre
veiled by kindly mists which seemed to rise hour by hour to soften and
hide it.

But often in those days did it occur that the hurrying and changing
visitors to the house in Eaton Square, glancing at Robin as she sat
writing letters, or as she passed them in some hall or room, found
themselves momentarily arrested in an almost startled fashion by the
mere radiance of her.

"She is lovelier every time one turns one's head towards her," the
Starling said--the Starling having become a vigorous worker and the
Duchess giving welcome to any man, woman or child who could be counted
on for honest help. "It almost frightens me to see her eyes when she
looks up suddenly. It is like finding one's self too close to a star. A
star in the sky is all very well--but a star only three feet away from
one is a kind of shock. What has happened to the child?"

She said it to Gerald Vesey who between hours of military training was
helping Ha