. It's good of you to take them. But that doesn't release you
from your obligations."

She laid the manuscript on the window-seat, protected by her hand. He
sat there facing her, and for a moment neither spoke.

"I haven't very much time," he said at last. "I've got to catch the
seven-forty."

"You haven't. We don't want you to go like this. Now you're here you
must stay a fortnight at the very least."

He hung his head. He did not want her to see how immense was the
temptation. He murmured some half-audible, agitated thanks, but his
refusal was made quite plain. He could not give up the advantage he
had counted on. "I'm afraid I must bore you again a little now. I've
only got an hour."

"Don't spoil it, then. See how beautiful it is."

She rose and threw open the lattice, and they stood together for a
moment looking out. It was about an hour before sunset, an April
sunset, the golden consummation of the wedding of heaven and earth. He
felt a delicate vibration in the air, the last tender resonance of the
nuptial song. This April was not the April of the streets where the
great wooing of the world goes on with violence and clangour; for the
city is earth turned to stone and yields herself struggling and
unwilling to the invasion of the sky. Here all the beautiful
deep-bosomed land lay still, breathless in her escape from the wind to
the sun. Up the western valley the earth gave all her greenness naked
to the light; but the hills were dim with the divine approaches of her
mystical union, washed by the undivided streams of blue and purple air
that flowed to the thin spiritual verge, where earth is caught up and
withdrawn behind heaven's inmost veil.

The hour was beautiful as she had said. Its beauty had clothed itself
with immortality in light; yet there was in it such mortal tenderness
as drew his heart after it and melted his will in longing. He turned
from the window and looked at her with all his trouble in his eyes.

Lucia saw that her words had saddened him, and she sat still, devising
some comfort for him in her heart.

"I don't think," he said at last, "you quite know what you are doing.
I'm going to tell you something that I didn't mean to tell you. When I
said I'd had nothing to do with all this, it wasn't altogether true."

"So I supposed," she murmured.

"There was a--a certain amount of trouble and difficulty about it--"

"And what did that mean?"

"It only meant that I had to work rather har