Though there had been no rain for several weeks, a strong stream was flowing, and he punted swiftly to Skindle’s lawn before he found that it was still too early for tea. Shooting under Maidenhead Bridge, he crossed to the Berkshire side and drifted until he found another stretch of shady bank under which they could moor the boat and smoke. Ivy beckoned him to her side and struck a match for his cigarette.
“Eric, I shall never be able to do anything for you,” she whispered. “All you say is that you want to make me happy! Long before I met you, I’d wanted to meet you, because you wrote such wonderful plays. In New York... If anybody’d told me I was going to marry you, I should have burst out laughing. You were so big and famous. Coming over on the boat I hardly dared speak to you. I can’t believe it yet... If I came to you as I was in New York—I had something to give then—, I couldn’t believe it. But I never knew you then, I never thought that any man... out of a book, I mean... Oh, I can never do enough, I can never begin to repay you!”
Her urgency sent a glow through blood which Eric once thought would never again be warm. He wanted to see his mother and Gaisford, to say to them: “You told me to make one more effort, and I’ve made it. You told me to forget myself. Well, I have; and I’ve won. The biggest effort... and the biggest victory....”
“Love must be dead long before a man renders a bill, Ivy,” he said.
“I want to pay without waiting for it!”
“But love hasn’t been born yet.”
“Oh, it has, Eric!”
“When?”
“When you promised... You know.”
Eric laughed and took her hand: