The blue hills in the far distance were surely the peaks of Olympus and she had been permitted to know what existence meant there.
Not a doubt of him entered her heart, or a fear.

He certainly loved her as she loved him; they had been created for each other since the beginning of time.

And it was only a question of arrangement when she should go away with him and never part any more.
Marriage, as a ceremony in church, meant nothing to her.

Some such thing, of course, must take place, because of the stupid conventions of the world, but the sacrament, the real mating, was to be together--alone.
In her innocent and noble soul John Derringham now reigned as king.

He had never had a rival, and never would have while breath stayed in her fair body.
By the evening of that day he had reasoned himself into believing that the whole thing was a dream--or, if not a dream, he had better consider it as such; but at the same time, as the dusk grew, a wild longing swelled in his heart for its recurrence, and when the night came he could not any longer control himself, and as he had done before he wandered to the tree.
The moon, one day beyond its first quarter, was growing brighter, and a strange and mysterious shimmer was over everything as though the heat of the day were rising to give welcome and fuse itself in the night.
He was alone with the bird who throbbed from the copse, and as he sat in the sublime stillness he fancied he saw some does peep forth.