ed
man and wife?"

Pete's fist was still terrible, and his lips were gathering their words,
when Sylvie unbelievably spoke.

"Pete," she asked tremulously, and he felt her drawing even closer to
his side, "Pete, don't you want--you _do_ want--I know--I mean, will
you, would you--marry me?"

He was dumb as a rock, and gray. His hand opened; he stared from her
to the impossible intruder, the worker of the miracle, or rather for
he felt like a beast trapped, the strange layer of the snare. For an
instant the lake and the forest and the red sky turned in a great wheel
before his eyes. Then he caught Sylvie's wrist almost brutally in his
hand. "Be quiet!" he said; it was the savage speaking to his woman.
"You've gone mad. Come with me. As for you, sir, my marrying or not
marrying is none of your business--"

The minister looked sadly up into the young man's white and rigid face.

"God be with you!"

He bowed, turned and walked back along the beach, hands locked behind
his broad tweed back, his head bent.

Pete tightened his grip on Sylvie's arm. "Come," he said to her as
harshly as before. "We must hurry. It's nearly night."

Sylvie set her small teeth tight, bent down her head, and followed him
without a word. Their silence seemed to grow into a pressure, a weight.
It bent Pete's shoulders and Sylvie's slender neck, and whitened their
lips. All that they did not dare to say aloud bulked itself, huge and
thunderous, before the combined consciousness which makes a strange
third companion in such dual silences. They dared not pause, or look at
each other, or move their strained lips for fear truth, the desperate,
treacherous truth, would leap out and link them like a lightning-flash.
The somber forest enveloped them. They moved through it as through a
deep wall that opened by enchantment. The moon came up, gibbous and
white and glittering, paler than silver; and the forest became streaked
and mottled with its light. A soft, sudden wind tore the light and shade
into eerie, dancing ribbons and tatters and shreds. There were such
sounds as are not heard in daylight--moon sounds and cloud sounds and
sounds of dark wind; branches talked and other small voices answered in
anxious undertones. A moose rubbed his antlers and coughed. They heard
his big body hulking through a swamp down there in a well of darkness.

"I can't go so fast." Sylvie's shaken voice moved doubtfully. "I'm
tired."

She pulled at his arm and stopped