Her whole face brightened when I said that, and she cried eagerly, “There is a farm-house on the hill where they take visitors in the summer, and I don’t think they have anyone yet. I often go past it in my walks, and I haven’t seen any strangers about.” My heart exulted within me. There was to be no walking tour for me that summer. When one has come within the gates of Paradise how can he want to wander more? And so I took off my knapsack in the honeysuckle porch of the little farm-house, and stayed on. It chanced for our undoing that the strict governess had gone away for her own holiday a day or two before I came, and did not return till it was time for me to exile myself from Eden. Violet was left alone. No callers had come to the Castle for many years. There were no neighbours in her own station of life within many miles. The clergyman was an old bachelor interested only in butterflies and moths, of which he had a wonderful collection, and blind to everything that went on in his parish. If our romance was watched, and I have no doubt that it was watched by many curious eyes unknown to us, none of the watchers dared to carry tales of his daughter to the Earl of Ledbury. Violet saw her father twice a day at meals, and he never dreamed of asking her how she spent her time between. The golden month rolled by. The first few days each of us made believe that our meetings were accidental. But soon we ceased to pretend that it was chance that had led her steps up the hill and led mine down them to the wood in which we came together. We explored the hills in company, rousing the partridges from the corn and rabbits from the fern. The wood-pigeons cooed and wheeled above our heads; the robins peeped at us from the hedges and the squirrels from the trees. We stood beside the lonely cromlech named after the mythical hero who held the Saxon hosts at bay, and we looked down into the Golden Valley and saw the peaks of the Welsh mountains far away. And we were happy.... Lightly, O lightly, broke upon me the knowledge that she loved me. What I had never hoped for had come to pass. I had been content to worship her in silence. Endymion might so have worshipped Artemis if he had been the first to see her. Bottom, the weaver, might so have worshipped Titania if the magic juice had touched his eyelids before hers. She had been as unapproachable in my eyes as any inhabitant of the moonlit world of sleep. It was with almost a pang, with a strange shrinking of the heart, that I first perceived that she was mortal like myself, and that I had awakened her. I seemed to have broken into a temple and profaned the shrine. I do not recollect that we said anything. One day when we were walking side by side along a sunken lane that led to a little waterfall I stooped suddenly and kissed her.