So that, charged as was the atmosphere between them, it was some time before they found a real freedom of speech. The openings, the gambits, which were to lead them to the very heart of the game, were at first masked and hesitating. They talked a little--perfunctorily--about the dale and its folk, and Mary fell without difficulty now and then into the broad Westmoreland speech, which delighted Meynell's ear, and brought the laugh back to his eyes. Then, abruptly, he told her that the campaign of slander was over, and that the battle, instead of "infinite mess and dislocation," was now to be a straight and clean one. He said nothing of Barron; but he spoke tenderly of the Bishop, and Mary's eyes swam a little. She on her part dared to speak of Alice and Hester. And very soon it was quietly recognized between these two that Alice's story was known to Mary; and, for the first time in his life, Meynell spoke with free emotion and self-criticism of the task which Neville Flood had laid upon him. Had there been in Mary some natural dread of the moment when she must first hear the full story of his relation to Alice? If so, it was soon dispelled. He could not have told the story more simply; but its beauty shone out. Only, she was startled, even terrified, by certain glimpses which his talk gave her into his feeling with regard to Hester. She saw plainly that the possibility of a catastrophe, in spite of all he could do, was ever present to him; and she saw also, or thought she saw, that his conception of his own part in the great religious campaign was strangely--morbidly--dependent upon the fate of Hester. If he was able to save her from herself and from the man who threatened her, well and good; if not, as he had said to Mary once before, he was not fit to be any man's leader, and should feel himself the Jonah of any cause. There was a certain mystical passion in it, the strong superstition of a man in whom a great natural sensitiveness led often and readily to despondency; as though he "asked for a sign." They passed the noisy little river by the stepping-stones and then climbed a shoulder of fell between Long Whindale and the next valley. Descending a sunny mountainside, they crossed some water meadows, and mounted the hill beyond, to a spot that Mary had marked in her walks. Beside a little tumbling stream and beneath a thicket of holly, lay a flat-topped rock commanding all the spectacle of flood and fell. Mary guided him there; and then stood silent and flushed, conscious that she herself had brought the supreme moment to its birth. The same perception rushed upon Meynell. He looked into her eyes, smiling and masterful, all his hesitations cleared away.... "Sit there, my lady of the fells!" He led her to the rocky throne, and, wrapped in his old Inverness cloak, he took a place on a lesser stone at her feet. Suddenly, he raised a hand and caught hers. She found herself trembling, and looking down into his upturned face.