Explore "Ovington's Bank" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
They were standing on the narrow strip of sward between the wood and the stream, which the gun accident had for ever made memorable to them. The stile rose between them, but seeing that his hands rested on hers, and his eyes dwelt unrebuked on her conscious face, the barrier was but as the equator, which divides but does not separate; the sacrifice to propriety was less than it seemed. Spring had come with a rush, the hedges were everywhere bursting into leaf. In the Thirty Acres which climbed the hill above them, the thrushes were singing their May-day song, and beside them the brook rippled and sparkled in the sunshine. All Nature rejoiced, and the pulse of youth leapt to the universal rhythm. The maiden's eyes repeated what the man's lips uttered, and for the time to love and to be loved was all in all.
"To think," he murmured, "that if I had not been so awkward we should not have known one another! " And, silly man, he thought this the height of wisdom.