"I could never say anything like that," said Roger, flicking a fly off Merrylegs' back, "but I might feel it. I do feel it, and more."
"That is the only thing that matters," said Annette, with a tremor in her voice.
"This is not the moment!" whispered Roger's bachelor instinct, in sudden panic at its imminent extinction. "I'd better wait till later in the afternoon," he assented cautiously to himself. "A dogcart's not the place."
They crossed the common, and drove through an ancient forest of oak and holly in which kings had hunted, and where the last wolf in England had been killed.
And Roger told her of the great flood in the year of Waterloo, when the sea burst over the breakwater between Haliwater and Kirby, and carried away the old Hundred bridge, and forced the fishes into the forest, where his grandfather had seen them weeks afterwards sticking in the bushes.
When they emerged once more into the open the homely landscape had changed. The blackberried hedges were gone, replaced by long lines of thin firs, marking the boundaries between the fields. Sea mews were wheeling and calling among the uncouth hummocked gorse, which crowded up on either side of the white poppy-edged road. There was salt in the air.
Roger pointed with his whip.
"The Rieben again," he said.
But could this mighty river with its mile-wide water be indeed the Rieben? Just beyond it, close beside it, divided only by a narrow thong of shingle, lay the sea.