‘Did I do right?’ she inquired anxiously. ‘Is there any one? Was I bad? You were only giving me a fright!’ Her startled eyes reproached me.

‘All the deer in the country were watching you,’ I stated.

She breathed her relief and sat up laughing.

‘I thought for certain some one had seen me. My heart came into my mouth. What would we do if it had been a man, Hugh?’

‘Leave here and find another hiding-place,’ I told her grimly.

‘Leave our cave! We couldn’t do that, after the work we’ve done. What a fright I got. My heart’s going like a jakey mill. It doesn’t matter for deer.’

‘It might, Terry. They should be lying at peace just now, and if a gamekeeper saw stags running away from this direction a few times he’d soon grow suspicious. It’s not the deer seeing us that matters but other people seeing the deer. Lie down and let them settle.’

‘I should be working,’ she protested feebly. ‘What a gorgeous day! Who’d imagine there was trouble in the world?’ She crouched low in the heather.

‘Och, no need to lie so close as that,’ I laughed. ‘So long as you don’t go moving abruptly there’s no fear. Stags haven’t very good eyes and the sun’s against them. That’s a pretty noticeable jersey you’re wearing.’

‘Don’t you like it?’ she asked, wide-eyed. ‘I thought it suited me.’

‘You know, Terry,’ I continued, ‘the biggest danger we have to contend with is that we’ll become too contented here and give up all thought of the future.’

‘I like being contented,’ she returned.

‘It’s not easy to believe that men are killing each other,’ I went on.

‘How is the diary going?’ she asked. I showed her the blank pages of the notebook.

‘Terry,’ I said, ‘when we were so miserable, only a month past, I thought I’d never escape remembering.’

‘It was an unhappy time, Hugh.’

‘I’d never like to go through a time like it again. But Terry, it’s as if it never happened for all I can feel of it now. Like a dream, or a tale in a book, or old gossip. I can scarcely believe there was a time when we weren’t here. This country seems the only reality, and you can’t feel with your heart that the affairs of men are important; it’s hard to believe there are men, in a country so empty, so self-sufficient, as this.’

‘A woeful dream, if it was a dream,’ she whispered. ‘A dream that murders men. Maybe this forgetting defends us.’

‘Against—madness,’ I took her up soberly. ‘We were walking on a thin edge, Terry, when we were so uncertain and divided in our minds.’