She saw him as the train ran in; but they met without a hand-clasp, without a word, simply looking at each other and breaking into smiles.
A little victoria “dug up”—as Summerhay said—“horse, driver and all,” carried them slowly upward. Under cover of the light rugs their hands were clasped, and they never ceased to look into each other's faces, except for those formal glances of propriety which deceive no one.
The day was beautiful, as only early September days can be—when the sun is hot, yet not too hot, and its light falls in a silken radiance on trees just losing the opulent monotony of summer, on silvery-gold reaped fields, silvery-green uplands, golden mustard; when shots ring out in the distance, and, as one gazes, a leaf falls, without reason, as it would seem. Presently they branched off the main road by a lane past a clump of beeches and drew up at the gate of a lonely house, built of very old red brick, and covered by Virginia creeper just turning—a house with an ingle-nook and low, broad chimneys. Before it was a walled, neglected lawn, with poplars and one large walnut-tree. The sunlight seemed to have collected in that garden, and there was a tremendous hum of bees. Above the trees, the downs could be seen where racehorses, they said, were trained. Summerhay had the keys of the house, and they went in. To Gyp, it was like a child's “pretending”—to imagine they were going to live there together, to sort out the rooms and consecrate each. She would not spoil this perfect day by argument or admission of the need for a decision. And when he asked:
“Well, darling, what do you think of it?” she only answered:
“Oh, lovely, in a way; but let's go back to the river and make the most of it.”
They took boat at 'The Bowl of Cream,' the river inn where Summerhay was staying. To him, who had been a rowing man at Oxford, the river was known from Lechlade to Richmond; but Gyp had never in her life been on it, and its placid magic, unlike that of any other river in the world, almost overwhelmed her. On this glistening, windless day, to drift along past the bright, flat water-lily leaves over the greenish depths, to listen to the pigeons, watch the dragon-flies flitting past, and the fish leaping lazily, not even steering, letting her hand dabble in the water, then cooling her sun-warmed cheek with it, and all the time gazing at Summerhay, who, dipping his sculls gently, gazed at her—all this was like a voyage down some river of dreams, the very fulfilment of felicity. There is a degree of happiness known to the human heart which seems to belong to some enchanted world—a bright maze into which, for a moment now and then, we escape and wander. To-day, he was more than ever like her Botticelli “Young Man,” with his neck bare, and his face so clear-eyed and broad and brown. Had she really had a life with another man? And only a year ago? It seemed inconceivable!
But when, in the last backwater, he tied the boat up and came to sit with her once more, it was already getting late, and the vague melancholy of the now shadowy river was stealing into her. And, with a sort of sinking in her heart, she heard him begin:
“Gyp, we MUST go away together. We can never stand it going on apart, snatching hours here and there.”
Pressing his hand to her cheeks, she murmured:
“Why not, darling? Hasn't this been perfect? What could we ever have more perfect? It's been paradise itself!”