Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/131

Rh When lunch was over they sat on the sloped, short turf and watched the rabbits in the warren below. They sat there and they talked. And to the end of her days no one will know her soul as he knew it that day, and no one ever knew better than she that aspect of his soul which he chose that day to represent as its permanent form.

The hours went by, and when the shadows began to lengthen and the sun to hide behind the wood they were sitting hand in hand. All the entrenchments of her life's training, her barriers of maidenly reserve, had been swept away by the torrent of his caprice, his indolently formed determination to drink the delicate sweet cup of this day to the full.

It was in silence that they went back along the wood-path—her hand in his, as before. Yet not as before, for now he held it pressed against his heart.

"Oh, what a day—what a day of days!" he murmured. "Was there ever such a day? Could there ever have been? Tell me—tell me! Could there?"

And she answered, turning aside a changed, softened, transfigured face.