him in her eyes.

He hesitated, baffled, withdrawing.

'No,' he said, 'it isn't. Spoken like that, never in the world. You've
no business to utter the word.'

'I must leave it to you, to take it out of the Ark of the Covenant at
the right moment,' she mocked.

Again they looked at each other. She suddenly sprang up, turned her
back to him, and walked away. He too rose slowly and went to the
water's edge, where, crouching, he began to amuse himself
unconsciously. Picking a daisy he dropped it on the pond, so that the
stem was a keel, the flower floated like a little water lily, staring
with its open face up to the sky. It turned slowly round, in a slow,
slow Dervish dance, as it veered away.

He watched it, then dropped another daisy into the water, and after
that another, and sat watching them with bright, absolved eyes,
crouching near on the bank. Ursula turned to look. A strange feeling
possessed her, as if something were taking place. But it was all
intangible. And some sort of control was being put on her. She could
not know. She could only watch the brilliant little discs of the
daisies veering slowly in travel on the dark, lustrous water. The
little flotilla was drifting into the light, a company of white specks
in the distance.

'Do let us go to the shore, to follow them,' she said, afraid of being
any longer imprisoned on the island. And they pushed off in the punt.

She was glad to be on the free land again. She went along the bank
towards the sluice. The daisies were scattered broadcast on the pond,
tiny radiant things, like an exaltation, points of exaltation here and
there. Why did they move her so strongly and mystically?

'Look,' he said, 'your boat of purple paper is escorting them, and they
are a convoy of rafts.'

Some of the daisies came slowly towards her, hesitating, making a shy
bright little cotillion on the dark clear water. Their gay bright
candour moved her so much as they came near, that she was almost in
tears.

'Why are they so lovely,' she cried. 'Why do I think them so lovely?'

'They are nice flowers,' he said, her emotional tones putting a
constraint on him.

'You know that a daisy is a company of florets, a concourse, become
individual. Don't the botanists put it highest in the line of
development? I believe they do.'

'The compositae, yes, I think so,' said Ursula, who was never very sure
of anything. Things she knew perfectly well, at one moment, seemed to
become doub