This sudden silence, this new way of looking at him, were the only things that perplexed him. In all else, silent as they sat, their communion was perfect. It was in the mind of each that the women might be arrested on the morrow; in the mind of each that this was their last evening together, the last of few, yet not so few that they did not seem to the man and the girl to bulk large in their lives. On that hearth they had met, there she had proved to him what she was, there he had spoken, there spent the clouded never-to-be-forgotten days of their troubled courtship. No wonder that as they sat hand in hand, their hair almost mingling, their eyes on the red glow of the smouldering log, and, not daring to look forward, looked back--no wonder that their love grew to be something other than the common love of man and maid, something higher and more beautiful, touched--as the hills are touched at sunset--by the evening glow of parting and self-sacrifice. Silent amid the silence of the house; living moments never to be forgotten; welcoming together the twin companions, love and death. But from the darkest outlook of the mind, as of the eye, morning dispels some shadows; into the most depressing atmosphere daylight brings hope, brings actuality, brings at least the need to be doing. Claude's heart, as he slipped from his couch on the settle next morning, and admitted the light and turned the log and stirred the embers, was sad and full of foreboding. But as the room, its disorder abated, took on a more pleasant aspect, as the fire crackled and blazed on the hearth, and the flush of sunrise spread over the east, he grew--he could not but grow, for he was young--more cheerful also. He swept the floor and filled the kettle and let in the air; and had done almost all he knew how to do, before he heard Anne's foot upon the stairs. She had slept little and looked pale and haggard; almost more pale and wan than he had ever seen her look. And this must have sunk his heart to zero, if a certain item in her aspect had not at the same time diverted his attention. "You are not going out?" he cried in astonishment. She wore her hood. "I am not going to defend myself again," she answered, smiling sadly. "Have no fear. I shall not repeat that mistake. I am only going----" "You are not going anywhere!" he answered firmly. She shook her head with the same wan smile. "We must live," she said. "Well?" "And to live must have water." "I have filled the kettle." "And emptied the water-pot," she retorted. "True," he said. "But surely it will be time to refill it when we want it." "I shall attract less attention now," she answered quietly, "than later in the day. There are few abroad. I will draw my hood about my face, and no one will heed me." He laughed in tender derision. "You will not go!" he said. "Did you think that I would let you run a risk rather than fetch the water from the conduit." "You will go?" "Where is the pot?"