urn was irresistible. I called to the
skipper, and told him to put her head about."

"Then you did think of me whilst you were away?"

Evelyn looked at him with her soft, female eyes, and meeting his keen,
bright, male eyes, she drew away from him with a little dread.
Immediately after, this sensation of dread gave way to a delicious joy;
an irresponsible joy deep down in her heart, a joy so intimate that she
was thankful to know that none could know it but herself.

Her woman's instinct told her that many women had loved him. She
suspected that the little lilt in his voice, and the glance that
accompanied it, were the relics of an old love affair. She hoped it was
not a survival of Georgina.

"It must be nearly one o'clock. It is time for you to come to talk to
father about the Greek hymn."

"Let's look at this picture first--'The Fete beneath the Colonnade'--it
is one of the most beautiful things in the world."

CHAPTER FIVE

Sipping her coffee, her feet on the fender, she abandoned herself to
memories of the afternoon. She had been to the Carmelite Church in
Kensington, to hear the music of a new and very realistic Belgian
composer; and, walking down the High Street after Mass, she and Owen had
argued his artistic intentions. At the end of the High Street, he had
proposed that they should walk in the Gardens. The broad walk was full
of the colour of Spring and its perfume, the thick grass was like a
carpet beneath their feet; they had lingered by a pond, and she had
watched the little yachts, carrying each a portent of her own success or
failure. The Albert Hall curved over the tops of the trees, and sheep
strayed through the deep May grass in Arcadian peacefulness; but the
most vivid impression was when they had come upon a lawn stretching
gently to the water's edge. Owen had feared the day was too cold for
sitting out, but at that moment the sun contradicted him with a broad,
warm gleam. He had fetched two chairs from a pile stacked under a tree,
and sitting on that lawn, swept by the shadow of softly moving trees,
they had talked an hour or more. The scene came back to her as she sat
looking into the fire. She saw the Spring, easily victorious amid the
low bushes, capturing the rough branches of the elms one by one, and the
distant slopes of the park, grey like a piece of faded tapestry. And as
in a tapestry, the ducks came through the mist in long, pulsing flight,
and when the day cleared the pea