Presently Miss Satchel was dismissed indoors on a transparent excuse and Mary and I were alone together. We eyed one another gravely. Perhaps all the more gravely because of the wild excitement that was quickening our pulse and breathing, and thrilling through our nerves. She pushed back the plate before her and put her dear elbows on the table and dropped her chin between her hands in an attitude that seemed all made of little memories. "I suppose," she said, "something of this kind was bound to happen." She turned her eyes to the mountains shining in the morning light. "I'm glad it has happened in a beautiful place. It might have been--anywhere." "Last night," I said, "I was thinking of you and wanting to hear your voice again. I thought I did." "I too. I wonder--if we had some dim perception...." She scanned my face. "Stephen, you're not much changed. You're looking well.... But your eyes--they're dog-tired eyes. Have you been working too hard?" "A conference--what did you call them once?--a Carnegieish conference in London. Hot weather and fussing work and endless hours of weak grey dusty speeches, and perhaps that clamber over there yesterday was too much. It _was_ too much. In India I damaged a leg.... I had meant to rest here for a day." "Well,--rest here." "With you!" "Why not? Now you are here." "But---- After all, we've promised." "It's none of our planning, Stephen." "It seems to me I ought to go right on--so soon as breakfast is over." She weighed that with just the same still pause, the same quiet moment of lips and eyes that I recalled so well. It was as things had always been between us that she should make her decision first and bring me to it. "It isn't natural," she decided, "with the sun rising and the day still freshly beginning that you should go or that I should go. I've wanted to meet you like this and talk about things,--ten thousand times. And as for me Stephen I _won't_ go. And I won't let you go if I can help it. Not this morning, anyhow. No. Go later in the day if you will, and let us two take this one talk that God Himself has given us. We've not planned it. It's His doing, not ours." I sat, yielding. "I am not so sure of God's participation," I said. "But I know I am very tired, and glad to be with you. I can't tell you how glad. So glad---- I think I should weep if I tried to say it...." "Three, four, five hours perhaps--even if people know. Is it so much worse than thirty minutes? We've broken the rules already; we've been flung together; it's not our doing, Stephen. A little while longer--adds so little to the offence and means to us----" "Yes," I said, "but--if Justin knows?" "He won't." "Your companion?" There was the briefest moment of reflection. "She's discretion itself," she said. "Still----" "If he's going to know the harm is done. We may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. And he won't know. No one will know." "The people here."