Arrived at the pool-side, within a few yards of him, the human couple, of whom he is so much too joyful to be the little spokesman, stand quite still, in fear of scaring him; but in his happy little heart there is no room for fear, and from the look of the poor souls he knows that they are not enemies. “I told you that he would save us the trouble of talking,” says Lavinia under her breath. He has saved the lesser singers of his own genus the same trouble, apparently; for whether quelled or entranced, or learning those imitations which they will afterwards practise with clever inferiority, they are dumbed. Lavinia listens at first with a sense of relief. The divine organ that lies in that little parcel of feathers is uttering all the longings, all the merging of two into one, all the fruition-nearing desires to which she may never, never give voice. To the deceit of that seeming relief succeeds an intolerable revolt. Why should she of all creation alone be silent? Why should not she for once speak out? Why, since this little island of time upon which they stand is their very own, since they have no future, since they have been ironically given this one half-hour to show them what life might have been,--why should not they be wise, and, pushing aside those dim ghosts which they themselves have quixotically interposed between the aching reality of their own bruised hearts, slake their terrible thirst for each other in one first and last draught? The temptation to throw herself upon his breast is so strong, that to her dazed senses she almost seems to herself to have already yielded to it, though in effect she has only stood in pale maidenliness at his side; but the illusion is so vivid, and the reactionary shock of horror at herself so potent, that she walks with unsteady haste away from her companion towards the singer, whom her movement puts to flight. “You have frightened him away!” says the young man, standing still on the path. “Yes; I am glad.” “_Glad!_ That is not a word that one seems to have much use for just now!” His tone tells her that the temptation is strong upon him too, and his action, in adding two or three more yards to those she has already set between them, that in deadly struggle he is grappling with it. If she were his true love, would not she come to his aid? With a prodigious effort she clears the red mist from before her eyes, and steadies the trembling in her traitorous hands. Then, rejoining him, and beginning to resume the walk that their charmed ears had first interrupted, she says, in a tone to whose cheerfulness she tries with all the force of her will-power not to give a hysterical ring-- “After all, there is a good deal to be glad of, if one comes to think of it--your recovery, your Victoria Cross----” “Yes,” indistinctly; but with an effort, whose suffering manliness she recognizes, to follow her lead--“yes; I am a sweep to complain!”