th us. What a pity that
we've just had luncheon." Could they not somehow revoke that meal?

Katharine, who had gone a few steps by herself down the road, and was
investigating the window of an ironmonger, as if her mother might have
got herself concealed among mowing-machines and garden-shears, turned
sharply on hearing her voice, and came towards them. She was a great
deal surprised to see Denham and Mary Datchet. Whether the cordiality
with which she greeted them was merely that which is natural to a
surprise meeting in the country, or whether she was really glad to see
them both, at any rate she exclaimed with unusual pleasure as she shook
hands:

"I never knew you lived here. Why didn't you say so, and we could have
met? And are you staying with Mary?" she continued, turning to Ralph.
"What a pity we didn't meet before."

Thus confronted at a distance of only a few feet by the real body of the
woman about whom he had dreamt so many million dreams, Ralph stammered;
he made a clutch at his self-control; the color either came to his
cheeks or left them, he knew not which; but he was determined to face
her and track down in the cold light of day whatever vestige of truth
there might be in his persistent imaginations. He did not succeed in
saying anything. It was Mary who spoke for both of them. He was struck
dumb by finding that Katharine was quite different, in some strange
way, from his memory, so that he had to dismiss his old view in order
to accept the new one. The wind was blowing her crimson scarf across her
face; the wind had already loosened her hair, which looped across the
corner of one of the large, dark eyes which, so he used to think, looked
sad; now they looked bright with the brightness of the sea struck by an
unclouded ray; everything about her seemed rapid, fragmentary, and full
of a kind of racing speed. He realized suddenly that he had never seen
her in the daylight before.

Meanwhile, it was decided that it was too late to go in search of ruins
as they had intended; and the whole party began to walk towards the
stables where the carriage had been put up.

"Do you know," said Katharine, keeping slightly in advance of the rest
with Ralph, "I thought I saw you this morning, standing at a window.
But I decided that it couldn't be you. And it must have been you all the
same."

"Yes, I thought I saw you--but it wasn't you," he replied.

This remark, and the rough strain in his voice, recalled to h