Surely it was beneath yonder tree that I had waked
to find my head pillowed in her lap, her cool hand upon my brow, her
lovely face stooped above me full of tender solicitude.
Remembering which, I was seized of a sudden passionate longing for the
touch of her hand, to behold again this face radiant with love.
'My poor heart is breaking I think--so I have fled away to hide--'
As I sat my horse, seeing in fancy the blotted lines of this, her
letter, to my yearning was added the triumphant assurance that in
spite of everything she loved me still; but this thought in turn was
'whelmed in despair because of the well-nigh hopelessness of my
search.
And in this moment my wandering gaze lighted upon the shadowy outline
of a gate that opened in the hedge upon my right hand, upon a rolling
meadow with a gloom of shadowy trees beyond.
Next moment I was afoot, leading my horse, for surely this was that
gate through which she had led me, swooning with my hurts, across this
meadow, amid trees and underbrush, to that ruined and desolate barn
which, she had once told me, had ever been her haven of refuge.
After some little delay, I contrived to open this gate and, leading my
horse, began to cross the meadow, glancing this way and that, often
pausing unsure, fearful that my memory was at fault. In this hesitant
manner I proceeded until I was dimly aware that the ground sloped down
before me into a place of shadows thick with dense-growing trees and
bushes.
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