Upon the limes the amber leaves still hung, faint yet loath to go, but the horse-chestnut had already dropped its garment of green and yellow at its feet.
A young robin was singing at intervals in the silence, telling how the secrets of the nests had been laid bare, singing a requiem on the dying leaves and the widowed branches, a song new to him, but with the old plaintive rapture in it that his fathers had been taught before him since the world began.
* * * * * She came towards him down the yellow glade through the sunshine and the shadow, with a spray of briony in her hand.

Neither spoke.

She put her hands into the hands that were held out for them, and their eyes met, grave and steadfast, with the light in them of an unalterable love.

So long they had looked at each other across a gulf.

So long they had stood apart.