"It will be almost morning." He made a reckless gesture. "Well, it's
too late to think of that now. Come on."

He threw himself down the bank, held up his hands to catch hers, and
swung her down beside him. The sun slanted warmly along the road and
just ahead flickered the blue ripples of a lake.

Sylvie moved quickly and easily beside him, barely touching his arm
with her hand. She seemed definitely to decide to put away her
childishness. She treated him as though she had forgotten his supposed
youth; she talked straightforwardly, with a certain dignity, about
her childhood, about her amusing and pitiful experience as a
third-rate little actress, and she asked him a question now and then
half diffidently, which he answered in stumbling, careful speech,
always weighed upon by his promise, by the deception he must practice,
by the dread of what must come. Nevertheless, minute by minute, his
pulse quickened. This, God be thanked, would mean the end. The
insufferable knot of circumstance, so fantastic, so extravagantly
unlivable and unreal, would break, Hugh would tear the tangle of his
making to tatters with angry hands when they got back. His difficult
trust in Pete's promise would go down under the strain of these long
and unexplained hours of Sylvie's absence in his company. It was the
last act in the extravaganza, queer and painful, that had twisted
them all out of their real shapes for the confusion of a blind waif.
This adventure that Sylvie's impatience had planned would bring down
the curtain. After all, no matter what came of it, Pete was glad.
The color warmed his face; his blue eyes deepened; he smiled down
at Sylvie beside him. For this hour she seemed to belong to him
rightfully, naturally, by her own will. He let go of his inhibitions