Towards evening poor Anne began to limp rather sorely. But not a word of complaint passed those resolute lips. Gervase too was in sad case. Full many a weary mile had they made since their wild setting forth in the dawn of the April morning. Several times in the late afternoon they were obliged to sit by the river and seek some little ease by taking off their shoes and stockings and by bathing their aching feet in the cool water. But their courage was wonderfully high, for youth was with them, and also Providence, and also a something rare and strange which each had kindled in the other’s heart. The mists of evening began to steal down the river. As the fugitives sat on a green bank by the side of the water, their faces aglow with the sunset, nature spoke to them with a new, a fuller, an intenser meaning. Bird and beast, herb and tree were thrilling with life. And yet as Gervase and Anne sat close together they felt a sense of their tragic destiny overtaking them. The life of one, perhaps of both, was forfeit. The dark shadow was ever in their minds. All thought of the morrow must be put away. The sun had left them now. Out of the dark valley, a little sinister with its close-grown gloom of trees, through which the reaches of the river wound, a faint wind came stealing. Very softly it caressed the face of the water, making an effect of music, eerie, solemn, yet enchanting. Gervase knitted his brave companion to his heart. The flood-tide of youth was surging in his veins. The sudden sense of possession, of high comradeship gave him one of those rare moments to which the mind goes back when it comes to ask whether life has been worth all that has been paid for it in blood and tears. To this slender thing, so true, so resolute, he owed the life which for the moment was raised to this perilous height of ecstasy. In his arms he held this great gift of God to man; but a voice spoke to the chivalrous heart of him that he must hold it reverently. One kiss on the lips he yielded and no more. He would have pressed a thousand there, but let him not forget the awful tragedy of their present hour. No consummation their love could ever know on earth. He fixed an iron control upon his will. And yet.... Whatever held the earthly morrow, were they not twin souls pledged to roam the starry spaces of eternity together? In the surge of his passion he tore himself suddenly from the warm embrace and rose wildly from the green bank of earth. The darkness came, and more weary miles they trudged, her cold hand clasped in his still colder one. The night fell very chill and without a single star. Soon they left the river and struck inland, through hedges and over swampy marshland, in the hope of finding a lodging for the night more hospitable than the open country.