Nielsen got out his sculls, and pushed out into the narrow stream. He said nothing more; with the kiss he had given her hand, he seemed to have relapsed into his usual patient resignation.
Every breath of wind had gone, the swallows were flying low, the hush of a perfect silence lay upon the river, yet there was felt rather than heard a mysterious singing, lost behind the veil of the blue sky—the voice of innumerable larks.
The sun, dropping into the west, laid a touch of warm light on Jocelyn’s cheek when she turned and, looking behind her, as the boat shot through the narrow entrance, grasped at a drift of thistledown floating aimlessly just out of her reach.
“That was like me,” she said to herself softly.
Nielsen, occupied with his sculls, did not catch the words. All the way to Reading she was either moodily silent or talked with spasmodic gaiety. She kept saying nervously, “You don’t think we shall lose the train, do you?”
As they were walking to the station from the river, she suddenly stood still, and said to Nielsen—
“D’you remember that picture we saw at Watts’s studio—the ‘Paolo’?”
“Yes,” he answered, “a drreadful picture.”
“It was not dreadful,” she said, “it was beautiful—you don’t see the meaning in it. I didn’t then, but I do now. There was ‘union’ in that picture—‘union’ in spite of everything else. I never realised it before.”
Before he could answer, she started to walk again. He did not understand her.