The lights were burning in the boy's dormitory, so Evelyn must still
be there, and finding a large stone among the rough ground where he
could sit he waited for her, interested in the round moon, looking
like the engraved dial of some great clock, and in the grey valley
and the sullen sky passing overhead into a dim blueness, in which he
could detect a star here and there. The evening hummed a little
still, and the sounds of voices, the last sounds to die out of a
landscape, became rare and faint. One by one the gossiping folk under
the hill crept within doors, and Owen was so absorbed by the silence
that he did not hear Evelyn approaching; and when she spoke he hardly
answered her, and she, as if participating already in his emotion,
stood by him, not asking for words from him, looking with him into
the solitude of the valley, seeking to see beyond the veils of blue
mist gathering and blotting out all detail, creeping up intimately
tender. What could he say to her worth saying at such a moment? he
began to ask himself; and just then a song came from a hawthorn
growing by the edge of the hill, a solitary song, mysterious and
strange, a passionate strain which freed their souls, till, walking
about this dusky hillside, the lovers seemed to lose their bodies and
to become all spirit; and they walked on in silence, speech seeming a
sacrilege.
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