He heard something behind him, the brush of feet.  Turning, he saw over the prostrate columns another figure; then before he was aware, another was at hand on the right, under a trilithon, and another on the left.  The dawn shone full on the front of the man westward, and Clare could discern from this that he was tall, and walked as if trained.  They all closed in with evident purpose.  Her story then was true!  Springing to his feet, he looked around for a weapon, loose stone, means of escape, anything.  By this time the nearest man was upon him.

“It is no use, sir,” he said.  “There are sixteen of us on the Plain, and the whole country is reared.”

“Let her finish her sleep!” he implored in a whisper of the men as they gathered round.

When they saw where she lay, which they had not done till then, they showed no objection, and stood watching her, as still as the pillars around.  He went to the stone and bent over her, holding one poor little hand; her breathing now was quick and small, like that of a lesser creature than a woman.  All waited in the growing light, their faces and hands as if they were silvered, the remainder of their figures dark, the stones glistening green-gray, the Plain still a mass of shade.  Soon the light was strong, and a ray shone upon her unconscious form, peering under her eyelids and waking her.

“What is it, Angel?” she said, starting up.  “Have they come for me?”

“Yes, dearest,” he said.  “They have come.”

“It is as it should be,” she murmured.  “Angel, I am almost glad—­yes, glad!  This happiness could not have lasted.  It was too much.  I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!”

She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the men having moved.

“I am ready,” she said quietly.

LIX

The city of Wintoncester, that fine old city, aforetime capital of Wessex, lay amidst its convex and concave downlands in all the brightness and warmth of a July morning.  The gabled brick, tile, and freestone houses had almost dried off for the season their integument of lichen, the streams in the meadows were low, and in the sloping High Street, from the West Gateway to the mediaeval cross, and from the mediaeval cross to the bridge, that leisurely dusting and sweeping was in progress which usually ushers in an old-fashioned market-day.

From the western gate aforesaid the highway, as every Wintoncestrian knows, ascends a long and regular incline of the exact length of a measured mile, leaving the houses gradually behind.  Up this road from the precincts of the city two persons were walking rapidly, as if unconscious of the trying ascent—­unconscious through preoccupation and not through buoyancy.  They had emerged upon this road through a narrow, barred wicket in a high wall a little lower down.  They seemed anxious to get out of the sight of the houses and of their kind, and this road appeared to offer the quickest means of doing so.  Though they were young, they walked with bowed heads, which gait of grief the sun’s rays smiled on pitilessly.