It was all rather ugly and ridiculous, and as before at Mockbeggar, the crowd began to straggle. This time there was no public-house to swallow up strays, but the marsh spread far and wide, a Land of Promise for lovers, who began to slink off two by two into the mists. Some who were not lovers formed themselves into noisy groups, and bumped about the lanes--waking the farmers' wives from Bosney to Marsh Quarter. Rose felt Handshut's arm clinging more tenderly about her, and she knew that he wanted to lead her away from the noise and glare, to the coolness and loneliness of the waterside. She wanted to go--her head ached, her nostrils tingled, and her eyes were sore with the fumes of tar, her ears wearied with the din. "Let's go home," she said faintly--"it's getting late." "We can go back by Corkwood across the marshes. It'll be quicker, and we shan't have no crowd spanneling round." They elbowed their way into the open, and soon the noise had died into a subdued roar, not so loud as the sigh of the reeds, while the bonfire showed only as a crimson stain on the eastward piling fogs. In time the contrast of silence grew quite painful. It ached. Only the sough of the wind in the reeds troubled it--the feet of Rose and Handshut were noiseless on the grass, they breathed inaudibly, only the breath of the watching night was heard. They skirted the Corkwood dyke, from which rose the stupefying, sodden, almost flavorous, smell of dying reeds--a waterfowl suddenly croaked among them, and another answered her with a wail from beyond Ethnam. The willows were shimmering silver dreams, bathed in the light of the moon which hung above the Fivewatering and had washed nearly all the stars out of the sky--only Sirius hung like a dim lamp over Great Knell, while Lyra was faint above Reedbed in the north. Rose walked half leaning against Handshut. She felt a very little feeble thing in the power of that great amorous night. The warm breath of the wind in her hair, the caress of moonlight on her eyes, the throbbing, miasmic, night-sweet scents of water and grass, the hush, the great sleep ... all tore at her heart, all weakened her with their huge soft strength, all crushed with their languors the poor resistance of her will. The tears began to roll down her cheeks, they shone on her face in the moonlight--they fell quite fast as she walked on gripped against her lover's heart. She was leaning more and more heavily against him, for her strength was ebbing fast--oh, if he would only speak!--she could not walk much further, and yet she dared not rest beside him on that haunted ground. At last they came to where the high land rose out of the levels like a shore out of the sea, with a lick of road on it, winding up to Peasmarsh. It was here that Rose's uncertain strength failed her, she lurched against Handshut, and still encircled by his arms slid to the grass.