Having reached it, Di sipped the highwater mark off her lemonade.
"It's safe now," she said. "I don't know why I took it; I don't want it now I've got it. Have you seen Archie since you came back? You know him, of course? He often talks about you."
"Yes, I saw him at the Thesinger wedding to-day."
"Were you there?"
"Yes, but only at the church. I did not go on to the house; I disliked the whole affair too much. Many marriages, half the marriages one sees, are only irrevocable flirtations; but the ceremony of to-day was not even that."
Di looked away through the mullioned window out across the river and its gliding shimmer to the lights beyond. She did not know how long it was before she spoke.
"I think it was a great sin," she said, at last, in a low voice, unconscious of a pause that to her companion was full of meaning.
"Or a great mistake," he said, gently.
"No, not a mistake," said Di, still looking out. "The others, the irrevocable flirtations, are the mistakes. There was no mistake to-day. But it was a dull wedding," she added, with sudden self-recollection and a change of manner. "Not like one I was at last autumn in the country. I was staying in the same house as the bridegroom, and he and the best man, a Mr. Lumley, got up at an early hour, woke some of the other men, and paraded the house with an impromptu band of music. I remember the bridegroom performed piercingly upon the comb. I wonder people ever play the comb; it is so plaintive. But perhaps it is your favourite instrument, perfected in the course of foreign travel, and I am trampling on your feelings unawares."
"I used to play upon it," said John, "but not of late years. I left it off because it tickled and increased the natural melancholy of my disposition. What were the other instruments?"