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multitude of peering eavesdroppers about them, cyclists, pedestrians,
peeping from the bushes, rustling (as sparrows will rustle about one in
the London parks) amidst the dead leaves in the woods behind, gliding
down the lake in boats towards a point of view, trying to get nearer to
them and hear.
It was the first hint that offered of the enormous interest the
countryside was taking in their meetings. And once--it was the seventh
time, and it precipitated the scandal--they met out upon the breezy
moorland under a clear moonlight, and talked in whispers there, for the
night was warm and still.
Very soon they had passed from the realisation that in them and through
them a new world of giantry shaped itself in the earth, from the
contemplation of the great struggle between big and little, in which
they were clearly destined to participate, to interests at once more
personal and more spacious. Each time they met and talked and looked on
one another, it crept a little more out of their subconscious being
towards recognition, that something more dear and wonderful than
friendship was between them, and walked between them and drew their
hands together. And in a little while they came to the word itself and
found themselves lovers, the Adam and Eve of a new race in the world.
They set foot side by side into the wonderful valley of love, with its
deep and quiet places. The world changed about them with their changing
mood, until presently it had become, as it were, a tabernacular beauty
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