He was dumb as a rock, and gray. His hand opened; he stared from her
to the impossible intruder, the worker of the miracle, or rather for
he felt like a beast trapped, the strange layer of the snare. For
an instant the lake and the forest and the red sky turned in a great
wheel before his eyes. Then he caught Sylvie's wrist almost brutally
in his hand. "Be quiet!" he said; it was the savage speaking to his
woman. "You've gone mad. Come with me. As for you, sir, my marrying
or not marrying is none of your business--"

The minister looked sadly up into the young man's white and rigid
face.

"God be with you!"

He bowed, turned and walked back along the beach, hands locked behind
his broad tweed back, his head bent.

Pete tightened his grip on Sylvie's arm. "Come," he said to her as
harshly as before. "We must hurry. It's nearly night."

Sylvie set her small teeth tight, bent down her head, and followed
him without a word. Their silence seemed to grow into a pressure,
a weight. It bent Pete's shoulders and Sylvie's slender neck, and
whitened their lips. All that they did not dare to say aloud bulked
itself, huge and thunderous, before the combined consciousness which
makes a strange third companion in such dual silences. They dared
not pause, or look at each other, or move their strained lips for
fear truth, the desperate, treacherous truth, would leap out and link
them like a lightning-flash. The somber forest enveloped them. They
moved through it as through a deep wall that opened by enchantment.