Wonderful I shan't realise it for a few days."
As they drove on to the bridge at Aysgarth, Piers Otway stood there
awaiting them. They exchanged few words; the picture before their
eyes, and the wild music that filled the air, imposed silence.
Headlong between its high banks plunged the swollen torrent, the
roaring spate; brown from its washing of the peaty moorland, and
churned into flying flakes of foam. Over the worn ledges, at other
times a succession of little waterfalls, rolled in resistless fury a
mighty cataract; at great rocks in mid-channel it leapt with surges
like those of an angry sea. The spectacle was fascinating in its
grandeur, appalling in its violence; with the broad leafage of the
glen arched over it in warm, still sunshine, wondrously beautiful.
They wandered some way by the river banks; then drove to other spots
of which Otway spoke, lunched at a village inn, and by four o'clock
returned altogether to the Castle. After tea, Piers found himself
alone with Irene. Mrs. Borisoff had left the room whilst he was
speaking, and so silently that for a moment he was not aware of her
withdrawal. Alone with Irene, for the first time since he had known
her; even at Ewell, long ago, they had never been together without
companionship. There fell a silence. Piers could not lift his eyes
to the face which had all day been before him, the face which seemed
more than ever beautiful amid nature's beauties.
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