He rose on the words, and lifted her to her feet. They descended the slope in silence, walking a little apart, as if accentuating the fact that their reunion in this June night of enchantment and faint stars was an incomplete thing after all. The moon was near her zenith; and, outside the formless dark of the forest, the great glade held her radiance as a goblet holds wine. Past the half-hidden temple of the holy lake they moved leisurely towards the cluster of tents that showed like a pallid excrescence at the forest's edge. To-night again, as on that earlier unforgettable day, they seemed the only living beings in a world of shadows and folded wings; and the decree of separation, coming at such a moment, put a severe strain on their self-control. Fifty feet from Quita's tent they stood still. She held out her hands. He pressed them closely between his own, that were strangely cold, and lifted them to his lips. Then she swayed forward unsteadily; and in an instant her face was hidden against his shoulder, her whole frame shaken with soundless sobs. A woman in tears sets even a case-hardened man at a disadvantage; and Lenox, confronted with the phenomenon for the first time in his life, experienced a sense of helpless bewilderment, coupled with a vague conviction of his own brutality in having brought this happy-hearted wife of his to such a pass. He could not guess that after a week of ceaseless tension, played out with no little fortitude, this moment of unrestraint came as a pure relief to her overwrought nerves; a relief that verged upon ecstasy, since her husband's arm was round her, his hand mechanically stroking her hair. "Hold up, hold up," he urged her gently. "This sort of thing will never do." But control, once lost, is ill to regain. His words produced no visible affect, for in her momentary abandonment, she could not see his face; or guess at the struggle that was enacting behind its curtain of self-mastery. And now, to discomfiture was added an overpowering temptation to trample on all scruples of conscience; to take that which was his, without further let or hindrance; and put an end to their distracting situation once for all. "Quita, . . . my darling wife . . . !" he broke out desperately. "For Heaven's sake pull yourself together. You are torturing me past endurance. Do you suppose it is an easy thing . . . to let you go?" She raised her head at that, compressing her lips to still their tremor. "Forgive me, . . . dearest. It was stupid of me to make a fuss. I will go now; and I promise not to behave like this again." She deliberately drew his head down to her own; and they kissed, once. Then she left him, something hurriedly; and he stood transfixed looking after her, till the falling flap of the tent hid her from view. There could be no thought of sleep for Eldred Lenox that night.