tle Effie, what are we doing! What are we doing!”
“Being happy! That’s enough for to-day, isn’t it? Don’t be such a dear old duffer, Guy.”
She laid the drawn sword of a flax-leaf across his mouth, laughing. Randal caught her hand, gripping it fast.
“Listen,” he said. “You are Life and Death and Heaven and Hell to me. And I—Heaven knows what I am to you. For I think that you don’t know the meaning of those words yet, Effie.”
“I—don’t know. It doesn’t matter, does it? I do love you, Guy.”
Her sweet breath was on his cheek, and her soft troubled face was very close. Randal nearly laughed. Just so would she have spoken to her grandmother.
For an instant the mad longing was in him to teach her, somehow, some way, that passion which, once lit, burns to eternity on the very core of life itself. Already she had taught him all the unrest that is beyond a name. Already she had taught him such desire as will purge all dross from a man, or will kill him, body and soul. She touched his neck gently.
“Do—do you know what love really means, Guy?”
Unseen, below the forehead of the hill Lou was whistling as the plough wore round, and
