'Do you imagine your report will have any effect?'
'At any rate,' she said, sighing, 'it seemed to me that it might divert her thoughts a little from the actual horror of her own summons. Anything is better than the torture of that one fixed idea as she lies there.'
'What is that?' said Robert, startled a little by some ghostly sounds in front of them. The little wood was almost dark, and he could see nothing.
'Only a horse trotting on in front of us,' said Catherine; 'our voices frightened him, I suppose. We shall be out on the fell again directly.'
And as they quitted the trees, a dark bulky form to the left suddenly lifted a shadowy head from the grass, and clattered down the slope.
A cluster of white-stemmed birches just ahead of them, caught whatever light was still left in the atmosphere, their feathery tops bending and swaying against the sky.
'How easily, with a mind attuned, one could people this whole path with ghosts!' said Robert. 'Look at those stems, and that line of stream coming down to the right, and listen to the wind among the fern.'
For they were passing a little gully deep in bracken, up which the blast was tearing its tempestuous way.
Catherine shivered a little, and the sense of physical exhaustion, which had been banished like everything else--doubt, humiliation, bitterness--by the one fact of his presence, came back on her.
'There is something, rather awful in this dark and storm,' she said, and paused.
'Would you have faced it alone?' he asked, his voice thrilling her with a hundred different meanings. 'I am glad I prevented it.'
'I have no fear of the mountains,' she said, trembling 'I know them, and they me.'
'But you are tired--your voice is tired--and the walk might have been more of an effort than you thought it. Do you never think of yourself?'
'Oh dear, yes,' said Catherine, trying to smile, and could find nothing else to say. They walked on a few moments in silence, splashes of rain breaking in their faces. Robert's inward excitement was growing fast. Suddenly Catherine's pulse stood still. She felt her hand lifted, drawn within his arm, covered close with his warm, trembling clasp.
'Catherine, let it stay there. Listen one moment. You gave me a hard lesson yesterday, too hard--I cannot learn it--I am bold--I claim you. Be my wife. Help me through this difficult world. I have loved you from the first moment. Come to me. Be kind to me.'