"No; you could not have been so cruel to her," he repeated, "not even loving me as you did and as she did not."
There was a pause, a pause in which it seemed to Odd that the very trees stretched out their branches in breathless listening, and Hilda said slowly--
"But that doesn"t make what I did less wrong. I was as weak, as disloyal, as though Katherine had loved us both as much as I thought she did."
"And I as cruel, as weak, as mean?" Odd asked.
"Ah, don"t!" she said, with a look of pain. "You have redeemed yourself," she added, "and have made me more ashamed."
"Then I have made a miserable failure of my attempt."
"No, no; you have not."
The river was before them now, and the woods sloped down to its curving band of silver. They both stood still and looked at it, and beyond it at the gentle stretches of autumnal hill and meadow.
"Dear Peter," said Hilda gently. He looked down at her and she up at him, putting her hand in his, but so gravely and quietly that the tender little action conveyed nothing but a reminiscence of the child of ten years ago.
So, holding hands, they were both still silent, and again they looked at the river, the meadows, and the blue distance of the hills. Palamon, after running here and there, with rather a.s.sumed interest, his nose to the ground, came and sat down before them with an air of dignified acquiescence and appreciative contemplation. In the woods the sudden, sad-sweet twitter of a bird seemed to embroider the silence with unconscious pathos.
"O Peter!" said Hilda suddenly, on a note as impulsive and as inevitable as the bird"s. He looked at her and put his arms around her, saying nothing.
"Oh!" said Hilda, "I cannot help it. I love you too much, dear Peter.
Everything else may have been wrong, but it is right to love you."
He took her face between his hands and looked at her.
"Everything else would be wrong."
"Then kiss me, Peter."
He gave himself the joy of a delicious postponement.
"Not till you tell me that you see that everything else would be wrong."
But the kiss was given before her answer.
"I trust you, and you must know."
THE END.