The past and the emotions of the past returned to him with a startling vividness. He could recall every moment of that day.
"I was so anxious to come off," he said. "You know I was to have gone into a bank and Gerald brought me down in the hope that your pater would take to me. I was frightfully nervous."
"So was I."
"But you'd never seen me."
"No, but Gerald had talked to me about you, and I thought it such rotten luck that a fellow like you should have to go into a bank. There'd been a row, hadn't there?"
They had reached the hedge that marked the boundary for the Marston estate; there was a gate in it, and they walked towards it. They stood for a moment, her arm still in his, looking at the quiet village that lay before them. Then Roland dropped her arm and leant against the gate.
"Yes, there'd been a row," he said, "and everything was going wrong, and I saw myself for the rest of my life a clerk adding up figures in a bank."
He paused, realising the analogy between that day and this. Then, as now, destiny had seemed to be closing in on him, robbing him of freedom and the chance to make of his life anything but a grey subservience. He had evaded destiny then, but it had caught him now. And he leant on the gate, hardly seeing the labourers trudging up the village street, talking in the porch of the public-house; their women returning home with their purchases for Sunday's dinner.
Again Muriel was oppressed by his silence.
"I remember Gerald telling us about it," she said, "and I was excited to see what you'd be like."