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.
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.
