quiet spot. Donal knew and loved the half unknown remote corners of the older London too. There were dim gardens behind old law courts, bits of mellow old enclosures and squares seemingly forgotten by the world, there were the immensities of the great parks where embowered paths and corners were at certain hours as unexplored as the wilderness. When the Duchess was away or a day of holiday came, there were, more than once, a few hours on the river where, with boat drawn up under enshrouding trees, green light and lapping water, sunshine and silence, rare swans sailing serenely near as if to guard them made the background to the thrill of heavenly young wonder and joy.
It was always the same. Each pair of eyes found in the beauty of the other the same wonder and, through that which the being of each expressed, each was shaken by the same inward thrill. Sometimes they simply sat and gazed at each other like happy amazed children scarcely able to translate their own delight. Their very aloofness from the world—its unawareness of their story's existence made for the perfection of all they felt.
"It could not be like this if any one but ourselves even knew," Donal said. "It is as if we had been changed into spirits and human beings could not see us."
There was seldom much leisure in their meetings. Sometimes they had only a few minutes in which to exchange a word or so, to cling to each other's hands. But even in these brief meetings the words that were said were food for new life and dreams when they were apart. And the tide rose.
But it did not overflow until one early morning when they met in a gorse-filled hollow at Hampstead, each looking at the other pale and stricken. In Robin's wide eyes was helpless horror and Donal knew too well what she was going to say.
"Lord Halwyn is killed!" she gasped out. "And four of his friends! We all danced the tango together—and that new kicking step!" She began to sob piteously. Somehow it was the sudden memory of the almost comic kicking step which overwhelmed her with the most gruesome sense of awfulness—as if the world had come to an end.
"It was new—and they laughed so! They are killed!" she cried beating her little hands. He had just heard the same news. Five of them! And he had heard details she had been spared.
He was as pale as she. He stood before her quivering, hot and cold. Until this hour they had been living only through the early growing wonder of their dream; they had only talked together and exquisitely yearned and thrilled at the marvel of every simple word or hand-touch or glance, and every meeting had been a new delight. But now suddenly the being of each shook and called to the other in wild need of the nearer nearness which is comfort and help. It was early—early morning—the heath spread about them wide and empty, and at that very instant a skylark sprang from its hidden nest in the earth and circled upward to heaven singing as to God.
"They will take you!" she wailed. "You—you!" And did not know that she held out her arms.
But he knew—with a great shock of incredible rapture and tempestuous answering. He caught her softness to his thudding young chest and kissed her sobbing mouth, her eyes, her hair, her little pulsing throat.
"Oh, little love," he himself almost sobbed the words. "Oh, little lovely love!"
She melted into his arms like a weeping child. It was as if she had always rested there and it was mere Nature that he should hold and comfort her. But he had never heard or dreamed of the possibility of such anguish as was in her sobbing.
"They will take you!" she said. "And—you danced too. And I must not hold you back! And I must stay here and wait and wait—and wait—until some day—! Donal! Donal!"
He sat down with her amongst the gorse and held her on his knee as if she had been six years old. She did not attempt to move but crouched there and clung to him with both hands. She remembered only one thing—that he must go! And there were cannons—and shells singing and screaming! And boys like George in awful heaps. No laughing face as it had once looked—all marred and strange and piteously lonely as they lay.
It took him a long time to calm her terror and woe. When at last he had so far quieted her that her sobs came only at intervals she seemed to awaken to sudden childish awkwardness. She sat up and shyly moved. "I didn't mean—I didn't know—!" she quavered. "I am—I am sitting on your knee like a baby!" But he could not let her go.
"It is because I love you so," he answered in his compelling boy voice, holding her gently. "Don't move—don't move! There is no time to think and wait—or care for anything—if we love each other. We do love each other, don't we?" He put his cheek against hers and pressed it there. "Oh, say we do," he begged. "There is no time. And listen to the skylark singing!"
The butterfly-wing flutter of her lashes against his cheek as she pressed the softness of her own closer, and the quick exquisite indrawing of her tender, half-sobbing childish breath were unspeakably lovely answering things—though he heard her whisper.
"Yes, Donal! Donal!" And again, "Donal! Donal!"
And he held her closer and kissed her very gently again. And they sat and whispered that they loved each other and had always loved each other and would love each other forever and forever and forever. Poor enrapt children! It has been said before, but they said it again and yet again. And the circling skylark seemed to sing at the very gates of God's heaven.
So the tide rose to its high flowing.
CHAPTER VII
The days of gold which linked themselves one to another with strange dawns of pearl and exquisite awakenings, each a miracle, the gemmed night whose blue darkness seemed studded with myriads of new stars, the noons whose heats or rains were all warm scents of flowers and fragrant mists, wrought themselves into a chain of earthly beauty. The hour in which the links must break and the chain end was always a faint spectre veiled by kindly mists which seemed to rise hour by hour to soften and hide it.
But often in those days did it occur that the hurrying and changing visitors to the house in Eaton Square, glancing at Robin as she sat writing letters, or as she passed them in some hall or room, found themselves momentarily arrested in an almost startled fashion by the mere radiance of her.
"She is lovelier every time one turns one's head towards her," the Starling said—the Starling having become a vigorous worker and the Duchess giving welcome to any man, woman or child who could be counted on for honest help. "It almost frightens me to see her eyes when she looks up suddenly. It is like finding one's self too close to a star. A star in the sky is all very well—but a star only three feet away from one is a kind of shock. What has happened to the child?"
She said it to Gerald Vesey who between hours of military training was helping Harrowby to arrange a matinee for the benefit of the Red Cross. Harrowby had been rejected by the military authorities on account of defective sight and weak chest but had with a promptness unexpected by his friends merged himself into unprominent, useful hard work which frequently consisted of doing disagreeable small jobs men of his type generally shied away from.
"Something has happened to her," answered Vesey. "She has the flight of a skylark let out of a cage. Her moving is flight—not ordinary walking. I hope her work has kept her away from—well, from young gods and things."
"The streets are full of them," said Harrowby, "marching to defy death and springing to meet glory—marching not walking. Young Mars and Ajax and young Paris with Helen in his eyes. She might be some youngster's
