A queer, startled look went over his face.

He hesitated for a moment.

Then he gathered himself together for a leap, to overtake her.
'Ah-h-h!' came her strange, intaken cry, as, on the reflex, she started, turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable swift beating of her white feet and fraying of her white garments, towards the church.
Like a hound the young man was after her, leaping the steps and swinging past her father, his supple haunches working like those of a hound that bears down on the quarry.
'Ay, after her!' cried the vulgar women below, carried suddenly into the sport.
She, her flowers shaken from her like froth, was steadying herself to turn the angle of the church.

She glanced behind, and with a wild cry of laughter and challenge, veered, poised, and was gone beyond the grey stone buttress.

In another instant the bridegroom, bent forward as he ran, had caught the angle of the silent stone with his hand, and had swung himself out of sight, his supple, strong loins vanishing in pursuit.
Instantly cries and exclamations of excitement burst from the crowd at the gate.