§ 4
They met in Kensington Gardens with an air of being clandestine and defiant. It was one of those days of amber sunlight, soft air, and tender beauty with which London relieves the tragic glooms of the year's decline. There were still a residue of warm-tinted leaves in puffs and clusters upon the tree branches, a boat or two ruffled the blue Serpentine, and the waterfowl gave colour and animation to the selvage of the water. The sedges were still a greenish yellow.
The two met shyly. They were both a little unfamiliar to each other. Trafford was black-coated, silk-hatted, umbrella-d, a decorous young professor in the place of the cheerful aeronaut who had fallen so gaily out of the sky. Marjorie had a new tailor-made dress of russet-green, and a little cloth toque ruled and disciplined the hair he had known as a ruddy confusion.... They had dreamt, I think, of extended arms and a wild rush to embrace one another. Instead, they shook hands.
"And so," said Trafford, "we meet again!"
"I don't see why we shouldn't meet!" said Marjorie.
There was a slight pause.
"Let's have two of those jolly little green chairs," said Trafford....
They walked across the grass towards the chairs he had indicated, and both were full of the momentous things they were finding it impossible to say.
"There ought to be squirrels here, as there are in New York," he said at last.
They sat down. There was a moment's silence, and then Trafford's spirit rose in rebellion and he plunged at this—this stranger beside him.