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They were both very hungry and footsore--for walking was a rare
exercise--and presently they sat down on the weedless, close-cropped
grass, and looked back for the first time at the city from which they
had come, shining wide and splendid in the blue haze of the valley of
the Thames. Elizabeth was a little afraid of the unenclosed sheep away
up the slope--she had never been near big unrestrained animals
before--but Denton reassured her. And overhead a white-winged bird
circled in the blue.
They talked but little until they had eaten, and then their tongues were
loosened. He spoke of the happiness that was now certainly theirs, of
the folly of not breaking sooner out of that magnificent prison of
latter-day life, of the old romantic days that had passed from the
world for ever. And then he became boastful. He took up the sword that
lay on the ground beside him, and she took it from his hand and ran a
tremulous finger along the blade.
"
"
"
And you could," she said, "you--could raise this and strike a man?"
Why not? If there were need."
But," she said, "it seems so horrible. It would slash.... There would
be"--her voice sank,--"blood."
"In the old romances you have read often enough ..."
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