Aloud she said—
"There's a place under beech trees—a sort of chalk plateau—I used to have picnics there with my brothers when I was a little girl—"
"Shall we go there?" he asked. "Will you really take me to the place that your pretty memories haunt? Ah—how good you are to me."
As they went down the steep wood-path she slipped, stumbled—he caught her.
"Give me your hand!" he said. "This path's not safe for you."
It was not. She gave him her hand, and they went down into the wood together.
The picnic was gay as an August garden. After a life of repression—to meet someone to whom one might be oneself! It was very good.
She said so. That was when he did kiss her hand.
When lunch was over they sat on the sloped, short turf and watched the rabbits in the warren below. They sat there and they talked. And to the end of her days no one will know her soul as he knew it that day, and no one ever knew better than she that aspect of his soul which he chose that day to represent as its permanent form.