While he stood there Isabel approached. There was no more battle, no more challenge in her air. Knowledge of the truth was enough for the hour. In the cold clear purity of dawn the ardours and agonies of passion could have no place. Kingston and she had found the great secret of their common life; no more words were needed.
‘We may as well be starting down,’ he said. ‘It will be easy enough now. I only hope Gundred has not been in a great state of anxiety. Did you get any sleep?’
‘It was a bony bed,’ replied Isabel, ‘but I managed to rest quite fairly. But I feel utterly tired and squashed. Do let us go home, and get fed and cleaned and decent again.’
‘In a few minutes,’ said he, ‘we shall hardly be able to believe we have ever been up here. This night will seem like fancy.’
‘Or else we shall feel that we have been up here all our lives, since the very beginning of things. Kingston, I was angry with you, but you have taken me up on to a mountain, and showed me more beautiful things than I ever thought there were in the world. I have been thinking. Perhaps I understand a little better now.’
He studied the calm radiance of her face. The sun fell full upon it, gilded and glorifying.
‘Yes, Isabel,’ he said, ‘we must do what we can. We must try to--to honour ourselves. I am glad you begin to understand. After all, nothing can take away the thought of what we have found together up here, you and I. And we must not let that thought get spoiled, Isabel. How pompous I sound, though!’
She sighed. ‘I am always running my head up against the walls of life,’ she answered. ‘I think I do see now what a mistake I made. I hurt myself and you. Oh, I shall never pretend to have conventional morals like you, but I am beginning to understand that self-denial is sometimes a splendid form of self-indulgence.’
The thrill of the new day, the glowing serenity of everything around him had their influence on Kingston. His emotions reached calmer, greater heights than before, above the reach of storms. His tongue was loosened for a moment.
‘We are above the world, Isabel,’ he said; ‘let us try to stay there.’
She looked at him, her smile touched with irony.
‘And yet,’ she answered, ‘you are going to lead me down into the valleys. Do you think one could always stay on the heights?’