"Yes. She went like a bird."
"How far did she go?" Tommy asked.
"I don't quite know," said Edward, quite truly, "how far she went. I shall know better to-morrow."
IV
THE SOUTH DOWNS
THE day was long. Though the aeroplane flew to admiration, though Tommy adored him and all his works, though the skylarks sang, and the downs were drenched in sunshine, Edward Basingstoke admitted to himself, before half its length was known to him, that the day was long.
He climbed the cliff above Cuckmere and sat in the sunshine there, where the gulls flashed white wings and screamed like babies; he watched the tide, milk-white with the fallen chalk of England's edge, come sousing in over the brown, seaweed-covered rocks; he felt the crisp warmth of the dry turf under his hand, and smelt the sweet smell of the thyme and the furze and the sea, and it was all good. But it was long. And, for the first time in his life, being alone was lonely.
And for the second time since the day when Charles, bounding at him from among the clean straw of an Oxford stable, had bounded into his affections, he had left that strenuous dog behind.