“Come close,” said he, and now there was
no doubt the smile was real. “Shall we
keep step, do you think?”
“If we go always like this, we might,”
said Sylvia, with a smile.
“At times there will be a step to be cut, no
doubt,” said he.
“You once said that I could stand firm while
the step was being cut,” she answered.
Always at the back of both their minds, evident from
time to time in some such phrase as this, was the
thought of the mountain upon which their friendship
had been sealed. Friendship had become love here
in the quiet Dorsetshire village, but in both their
thoughts it had another background—ice-slope
and rock-spire and the bright sun over all.
ON THE DOWN
Sylvia led the way to a little hollow just beneath
the ridge of the downs, a sheltered spot open to the
sea. On the three other sides bushes grew about
it and dry branches and leaves deeply carpeted the
floor. Here they rested and were silent.
Upon Sylvia’s troubled heart there had fallen
a mantle of deep peace. The strife, the fears,
the torturing questions had become dim like the small
griefs of childhood. Even the incident of the
lighted window vexed her not at all.
“Hilary,” she said softly, lingering on
the name, since to frame it and utter it and hear
her lips speaking it greatly pleased her, “Hilary,”
and her hand sought his, and finding it she was content.
It was a warm night of August. Overhead the moon
sailed in a cloudless summer sky, drowning the stars.
To the right, far below, the lamps of Weymouth curved
about the shore; and in front the great bay shimmered
like a jewel. Seven miles across it the massive
bluff of Portland pushed into the sea; and even those
rugged cliffs were subdued to the beauty of the night.
Beneath them the riding-lights shone steady upon the
masts of the battle ships. Sylvia looked out
upon the scene with an overflowing heart. Often
she had gazed on it before, and she marveled now how
quickly she had turned aside. Her eyes were now
susceptible to beauty as they had never been.
There was a glory upon land and sea, a throbbing tenderness
in the warm air of which she had not known till now.
It seemed to her that she had lived until this night
in a prison. Once the doors had been set ajar
for a little while—just for a night and
a day in the quiet of the High Alps. But only
now had they been opened wide. Only to-night had
she passed through and looked forth with an unhindered
vision upon the world; and she discovered it to be
a place of wonders and sweet magic.
“They were true, then,” she said, with
a smile on her lips.
“Of what do you speak?” asked Chayne.
“My dreams,” Sylvia answered, knowing
that she was justified of them. “For I
have come awake into the land of my dreams, and I know
it at last to be a real land, even to the sound of
running water.”
