I said to her that if she would like to rest for one
moment, I might be able to find my papers. We sat down together, and
she drew up her veil to read the address which I was about to give
her. She glanced at me, as I thought, with a strange expression of
excited interrogation, and something swiftly passed across her face,
which warned me that I had not a moment to lose. I took out one of
my own cards, handed it to her, and said, "Here is a reference which
perhaps you may know." She bent over it, turned to me, fixed her
eyes intently and directly on mine for one moment, and then I thought
she would have fallen. My arm was around her in an instant, her head
was on my shoulder, and my many wanderings were over. It was broad,
high, sunny noon, the most solitary hour of the daylight in those
fields. We were roused by the distant sound of the town clock
striking twelve; we rose and went on together to Cowston by the river
bank, returning late in the evening.
CHAPTER VIII--FLAGELLUM NON APPROQUINABIT TABERNACULO TUO
I suppose that the reason why in novels the story ends with a
marriage is partly that the excitement of the tale ceases then, and
partly also because of a theory that marriage is an epoch,
determining the career of life after it.
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