After luncheon Marcia made a sign, and she and Newbury slipped away. They wandered out beyond the lake into a big wood, where great pools of pink willow-herb, in its open spaces, caught the light as it struck through the gray trunks of the beeches. Newbury found a seat for Marcia on a fallen trunk, and threw himself beside her. The world seemed to have been all washed by the thunder-storm of the night before; the odors of grass, earth, and fern were steaming out into the summer air. The wood was alive with the hum of innumerable insects, which had become audible and dominant with the gradual silencing of the birds. In the half-cut hay-fields the machines stood at rest; rarely, an interlaced couple could be dimly seen for a moment on some distant footpath of the park; sometimes a partridge called or a jay screamed; otherwise a Sabbath stillness--as it seemed to Marcia, a Sabbath dreariness--held the scene. Newbury put up his arms, drew her down to him, and kissed her passionately. She yielded; but it was more yielding than response; and again he was conscious of misgiving as at luncheon. "Darling!--is there anything wrong--anything that troubles you?" he said, anxiously. "Do you think I've forgotten you for one moment, while I've been away?" "Yes; while you were asleep." She smiled shyly, while her fingers caressed his. "Wrong--quite wrong! I dreamed of you both nights. And oh, dearest, I thought of you last night." "Where--when?" Her voice was low--a little embarrassed. "In chapel--the chapel at Blackmount--at Benediction." She looked puzzled. "What is Benediction?" "A most beautiful service, though of late origin--which, like fools, we have let the Romans monopolize. The Bishops bar it, but in private chapels like our own, or Blackmount, they can't interfere. To me, yesterday evening"--his voice fell--"it was like the gate of heaven. I longed to have you there." She made no reply. Her brow knitted a little. He went on: