“I fancy,” said Chevenix, as they breasted the down, “that to the candid observer we present a very pretty sight. He's not here, but I wish he were. A free-moving young lady—this is my idea—a Diana of the Uplands—wasn't there a picture of the name?—going to see an emancipated party of the Open Road, with a chain round her heart, in the custody of a gentleman-friend.”
She took him on his own terms. “Explain your idea. What, for instance, is in the gentleman-friend's custody? The chain or the heart? Because, I assure you—”
“A truce,” said Chevenix, “to your assurances. What I mean is this. It's jolly decent of Nevile to let you off. I don't know how he can bear you out of his sight after the way he's behaved.”
She was in high spirits. She laughed at the vision of Nevile, deeply contrite and afraid that she would find him out. “I don't think Nevile cares much, whatever I may do.” But Chevenix shook his head.
“You never know where to have Nevile. What says the Primer? Timeo Danaos—don't you know?”
She pleaded, Might they not forget Nevile out here in the open? “Do you know,” she asked him, “that I haven't been out like this—”
“On the loose, eh?” he interposed. She nodded.
“Yes, like this—free to do as I like—the world before me—” She fronted the blue valley for a moment, and then turned to the wind—“and the wind in my face, ever since I left Wanless?” Then she reflected with wide and wondering eyes. “And before that—long before. I haven't been free, you know, ever since I knew Nevile. Oh!”—and she inhaled the spirit of the hour—“Oh, I could fall down and hug the earth. Don't you love the thymy smell? I don't know why, but it always makes me think of poetry—and that.” She lifted her rapt face to where, like a fountain of sound, a lark flooded the blue. “To lift up, and up, and up, to be so lovely because one was so glad! Nobody could do that!—except Jack,” she added half in a whisper.
“That old chap's not a man,” said Chevenix, “he's a spirit.”
“They used to call him the Faun, at Bill Hill, where I first met him,” she said. “I fancy now that I never knew him at all. But he knew all about me. That's why I'm so happy. Nobody has ever known me since—and it's such a bore to have to explain yourself. Other people seem to think I am extraordinary. I'm not at all—I'm the most ordinary person in the world. But he liked me like that.”