cause
for alarm? I have no reason to think that the Duke's messenger is in
pursuit of me; but should he be so, and should he overtake us, he has no
authority over you and no reason for betraying you to your enemies."

The blood poured back to her face. "Me! My enemies!" she stammered. "It
is not of them I think." She raised her head and faced him in a glow.

For a moment he stood stupidly gazing at her; then the mist lifted and
through it he saw a great light.

* * * * *

The landlord's knock warned them that their horses waited, and they rode
out in the grey morning. The world about them still lay in shade, and as
they climbed the wooded defile above the valley Odo was reminded of the
days at Donnaz when he had ridden up the mountain in the same early
light. Never since then had he felt, as he did now, the boy's easy
kinship with the unexpected, the sense that no encounter could be too
wonderful to fit in with the mere wonder of living.

To avoid the road to Peschiera they had resolved to cross the Monte
Baldo by a mule-track which should bring them out at one of the villages
on the eastern shore of Garda; and the search for this path led them up
through steep rain-scented woods where they had to part the wet boughs
as they passed. From time to time they regained the highway and rode
abreast, almost silent at first with the weight of their new nearness,
and then breaking into talk that was the mere overflow of what they were
thinking. There was in truth more to be felt between them than to be
said; since, as each was aware, the new light that suffused the present
left the future as obscure as before. But what mattered, when the hour
was theirs? The narrow kingdom of today is better worth ruling over than
the widest past or future; but not more than once does a man hold its
fugitive sceptre. The past, however, was theirs also: a past so
transformed that he must revisit it with her, joyously confronting her
new self with the image of her that met them at each turn. Then he had
himself to trace in her memories, his transfigured likeness to linger
over in the Narcissus-mirror of her faith in him. This interchange of
recollections served them as well as any outspoken expression of
feeling, and the most commonplace allusion was charged with happy
meanings.

Arabia Petraea had been an Eden to such travellers; how much more the
happy slopes they were now descending! All the afternoon their path