"Now I know quite well what you're doing," Margaret protested. "You're making that poor little wabbly track of ours try to bear all sorts of mysterious and symbolic intensities of meaning. Just because you're feeling annoyed with a sonnet, footprints in the snow mustn't lead anywhere. Why, Guy, if I told you what sentimental import my 'cello sometimes gives to a simple walk before lunch.... I mean, of course, when I've been playing badly."
She sighed, and Guy wondered if the violoncello had been used with as little reference as a sonnet to the real cause of the mood.
"Why did you sigh just now?" he asked after another minute or two of silent progress.
"I wonder whether I'll tell you. No, I don't think I will. And yet...."
"And yet perhaps, after all, you will," said Guy, eagerly. "And if you do, I'll tell you something in turn."
"That's no bribe," said Margaret, laughing. "You foolish creature, don't you think I know what you'll tell me?"
Guy shook his head.
"I don't think you do. You may suspect. But for that matter, so may I. Isn't what you might have told me something that might most suitably be told on the way to Fairfield?"
"You've been talking about me to Pauline," said Margaret, angrily.
"Never," he declared. "But you don't suppose you can have all these mysterious allusions to Richard without my guessing that his father is Vicar of Fairfield. Dear Margaret, forgive me for guessing and tell me what you were going to tell."