During that strange week-end, with only Michael and Fleur at ease, Dinny received one piece of enlightenment as she strolled in the garden.

“Em tells me,” said Fleur, “you’re all worked up about those costs — she says YOU think Dornford paid them, and that it’s giving you a feeling of obligation?”

“Oh? Well, it IS worrying, like finding you owe nothing to your dressmaker.”

“My dear,” said Fleur, “for your strictly private ear, I paid them. Roger came to dinner and made a song about hating to send in such a bill to people who had no money to spare, so I talked it over with Michael and sent Roger a cheque. My Dad made his money out of the Law, so it seemed appropriate.”

Dinny stared.

“You see,” continued Fleur, taking her arm, “thanks to the Government converting that loan, all my beautiful gilt-edgeds have gone up about ten points, so that, even after paying that nine hundred-odd, I’m still about fifteen thousand richer than I was, and they’re still going up. I’ve only told YOU, in confidence, because I was afraid it would weigh with you in making up your mind about Dornford. Tell me: Would it?”

“I don’t know,” said Dinny dully; and she didn’t.

“Michael says Dornford’s the freshest egg he’s come across for a long time; and Michael is very sensitive to freshness in eggs. You know,” said Fleur, stopping suddenly, and letting go her arm, “you puzzle me, Dinny. Everybody can see what you’re cut out for — wife and mother. Of course, I know what you’ve been through, but the past buries its dead. It is so, I’ve been through it, too. It’s the present and the future that matter, and we’re the present, and our children are the future. And you specially — because you’re so stuck on tradition and continuity and that — ought to carry on. Anybody who lets a memory spoil her life — forgive me, old thing, but it’s rather obviously now or never with you. And to think of you with ‘never’ chalked against you is too bleak. I’ve precious little MORAL sense,” continued Fleur, sniffing at a rose, “but I’ve a lot of the commoner article, and I simply hate to see waste.”

Dinny, touched by the look in those hazel eyes with the extraordinarily clear whites, stood very still, and said quietly:

“If I were a Catholic, like him, I shouldn’t have any doubt.”

“The cloister?” said Fleur sharply: “No! My mother’s a Catholic, but — No! Anyway, you’re not a Catholic. No, my dear — the hearth. That title was wrong, you know. It can’t be both.”

Dinny smiled. “I do apologise for worrying people so. Do you like these Angèle Pernets?”

She had no talk with Dornford all that Saturday, preoccupied as he was with the convictions of the neighbouring farmers. But after dinner, when she was scoring for the four who were playing Russian pool, he came and stood beside her.

“Hilarity in the home,” she said, adding nine presented by Fleur to the side on which she was not playing: “How did you find the farmers?”

“Confident.”

“Con —?”

“That whatever’s done will make things worse.”

“Oh! Ah! They’re so used to that, you see.”

“And what have YOU been doing all day, Dinny?”

“Picked flowers, walked with Fleur, played with ‘Cuffs,’ and dallied with the pigs. . . . Five on to your side, Michael, and seven on to the other. This is a very Christian game — doing unto others as you would they should do unto you.”

“Russian pool!” murmured Dornford: “Curious name nowadays for anything so infected with religion.”

“Apropos, if you want to go to Mass tomorrow, there’s Oxford.”

“You wouldn’t come with me?”

“Oh! Yes. I love Oxford, and I’ve only once heard a Mass. It takes about three-quarters of an hour to drive over.”

His look at her was much as the spaniel Foch gave when she returned to him after absence.

“Quarter past nine, then, in my car . . .”

When next day they were seated side by side, he said: “Shall we slide the roof back?”

“Please.”

“Dinny, this is like a dream.”

“I wish my dreams had such a smooth action.”

“Do you dream much?”

“Yes.”

“Nice or nasty?”

“Oh! like all dreams, a little of both.”

“Any recurrent ones?”

“One. A river I can’t cross.”

“Ah! like an examination one can’t pass. Dreams are ruthlessly revealing. If you could cross that river in your dream, would you be happier?”

“I don’t know.”

There was a silence, till he said:

“This car is a new make. You don’t have to change gears in the old way. But you don’t care for driving, do you?”

“I’m an idiot at it.”

“You’re not modern, you see, Dinny.”

“No. I’m much less efficient than most people.”

“In your own way I don’t know anybody so efficient.”

“You mean I can arrange flowers.”

“And see a joke; and be — a darling.”

It seemed to Dinny the last thing she had been able to be for nearly two years, so she merely replied:

“What was your college at Oxford?”

“Oriel”

And the conversation lapsed.

Some hay was stacked and some still lying out, and the midsummer air was full of its scent.

“I’m afraid,” said Dornford suddenly, “I don’t want to go to Mass. I don’t get so many chances to be with you, Dinny. Let’s make for Clifton and sit in a boat.”

“Well, it IS rather lovely for indoors.”

They turned off to the left, and, passing through Dorchester, came to the river by the bend and bluffs at Clifton. Leaving the car, they procured a punt and after drifting a little, moored it to the bank.

“This,” said Dinny, “is a nice exhibition of high purpose, I don’t think. ‘Something done’ isn’t always what was attempted, is it?”

“No, but it’s often better.”

“I wish we’d brought Foch; he likes any kind of vehicle where he can sit on one’s feet and get a nice sick feeling.”

But in that hour and more on the river they hardly talked at all. It was as if he understood — which, as a fact, he did not — how, in that drowsing summer silence, on water half in sunlight, half in shade, she was coming closer to him than ever before. There was, indeed, to Dinny something really restful and reassuring in those long lazing minutes, when she need not talk, but just take summer in at every pore — its scent, and hum, and quiet movement, the careless and untroubled hovering of its green spirit, the vague sway of the bulrushes, and the clucking of the water, and always that distant calling of the wood pigeons from far trees. She was finding, indeed, the truth of Clare’s words, that he could ‘let one’s mouth alone.’

By the time they were back at the Grange, it had been one of the most silent and satisfactory mornings she had ever known. But between his: “Thank you, Dinny, a heavenly time,” and his real feelings, she could tell from his eyes there was a great gap fixed. It was unnatural the way he kept his feelings in check! And, as became a woman, compassion soon changed in her to irritation. Anything better than this eternal repression, perf............