mping from one granite outcrop to another, holding on
the whiles by the lower branches of the scrub oak-trees.

He was dressed as if for an outing, in knickerbockers and huge,
hob-nailed shoes. He wore an old shooting-coat and a woollen cap; a
little leather sack was slung from his shoulder, and in his hand he
carried a short-handled geologist's hammer.

And then, after so long a time, Lloyd saw his face again--the rugged,
unhandsome face; the massive jaw, huge almost to deformity; the great,
brutal, indomitable lips; the square-cut chin with its forward,
aggressive thrust; the narrow forehead, seamed and contracted, and the
twinkling, keen eyes so marred by the cast, so heavily shadowed by the
shaggy eyebrows. When he spoke the voice came heavy and vibrant from the
great chest, a harsh, deep bass, a voice in which to command men, not a
voice in which to talk to women.

Lloyd, long schooled to self-repression and the control of her emotions
when such repression and control were necessary, sat absolutely moveless
on her high seat, her hands only shutting tighter and tighter upon the
reins. She had often wondered how she would feel, what was to be her
dominant impulse, at such moments as these, and now she realised that it
was not so much joy, not so much excitement, as a resolute determination
not for one instant to lose her poise.

She was thinking rapidly. For four years they had not met. At one time
she believed him to be dead. But in the end he had been saved, had come
back, and, ignoring the plaudits of an entire Christendom, had addressed
himself straight to her. For one of them, at least, this meeting was a
crisis. What would they first say to each other? how be equal to the
situation? how rise to its dramatic possibilities? But the moment had
come to them suddenly, had found them all unprepared. There was no time
to think of adequate words. Afterward, when she reviewed this encounter,
she told herself that they both had failed, and that if the meeting had
been faithfully reproduced upon the stage or in the pages of a novel it
would have seemed tame and commonplace. These two, living the actual
scene, with all the deep, strong, real emotions of them surging to the
surface, the vitality of them, all aroused and vibrating, suddenly
confronting actuality itself, were not even natural; were not even "true
to life." It was as though they had parted but a fortnight ago.

Bennett caught his cap from his head and came