Again she had lost sight of him, and the knowledge that as she was crawling up this next slippery hill, he was going pell-mell downwards, nearly killed her. She uttered his name now in gasping, voiceless breaths, though she knew it was worse than useless, but she could not refrain. If only he would stop for one moment. To die on one last, short breath in his arms would be better than to recover in solitude. There was no real recovery for her but in his arms. If she fell short of him her heart would break. It was breaking now. She had to keep her hand pressed over it. Why did he go on so fast and never stop? A fury of anger against him ran parallel with her desire. She loved him, needed him, hated him, all at once.

With the tears pouring down her scarlet cheeks, and all her features convulsed like a frantic lost child’s, she got somehow over the brow of the hill and looked for him.

He had stopped. He had turned round. She heard him shout … saw him come running towards her; and she tried to raise her arm in a signal. Though she was saved, she could not have stopped running now – not if she had known the next step to be her last. But soon they were only a few paces apart, and Lawrence, becoming suddenly unsure, stood still. He uttered some inarticulate sounds of question and welcome, but knew that he must wait for her. There was a treacherous looped root of heather in the turf between them, and Joanna was no longer able to lift her feet, nor to look where she was going. With her eyes on Lawrence’s face she tripped badly on the root, and as he darted forward to save her, she pitched forward right upon his breast.

For what to both seemed a long time, no word was spoken. Joanna clearly was quite unfit for speech. Her breath came and went in painful, sobbing gasps, do what she would to allay it, and her tumultuous heart-beats shook her body through and through. As for Lawrence, silence was his better part. He could only hold his love to him in fearful happiness.

But as soon as she began to draw away from him, he let her go. She still panted, her hair was fallen in a lump on one shoulder, her moist face blazed like heather flowers in September sunshine after a rain shower. She groped in her skirts and in her bosom.

“I must have lost my handkerchief!”

Lawrence pulled out his – a comfortable male square of linen – and put it in her hand.

“Thank you …” she murmured fervently. And when her face was a little comforted, she added seriously –

“I ran after you.”

Lawrence threw back his head and laughed to the sky.