e no answer to an aspersion she had heard
before.

XI

When Lennan reached his rooms again after that encounter with the
Ercotts, he found in his letterbox a visiting card: "Mrs. Doone" "Miss
Sylvia Doone," and on it pencilled the words: "Do come and see us before
we go down to Hayle--Sylvia." He stared blankly at the round handwriting
he knew so well.

Sylvia! Nothing perhaps could have made so plain to him how in this
tornado of his passion the world was drowned. Sylvia! He had almost
forgotten her existence; and yet, only last year, after he definitely
settled down in London, he had once more seen a good deal of her; and
even had soft thoughts of her again--with her pale-gold hair, her true
look, her sweetness. Then they had gone for the winter to Algiers for
her mother's health.

When they came back, he had already avoided seeing her, though that was
before Olive went to Monte Carlo, before he had even admitted his own
feeling. And since--he had not once thought of her. Not once! The
world had indeed vanished. "Do come and see us--Sylvia." The very
notion was an irritation. No rest from aching and impatience to be had
that way.

And then the idea came to him: Why not kill these hours of waiting for
to-morrow's meeting by going on the river passing by her cottage? There
was still one train that he could catch.

He reached the village after dark, and spent the night at the inn; got up
early next morning, took a boat, and pulled down-stream. The bluffs of
the opposite bank were wooded with high trees. The sun shone softly on
their leaves, and the bright stream was ruffled by a breeze that bent all
the reeds and slowly swayed the water-flowers. One thin white line of
wind streaked the blue sky. He shipped his sculls and drifted, listening
to the wood-pigeons, watching the swallows chasing. If only she were
here! To spend one long day thus, drifting with the stream! To have but
one such rest from longing! Her cottage, he knew, lay on the same side
as the village, and just beyond an island. She had told him of a hedge
of yew-trees, and a white dovecote almost at the water's edge. He came
to the island, and let his boat slide into the backwater. It was all
overgrown with willow-trees and alders, dark even in this early morning
radiance, and marvellously still. There was no room to row; he took the
boathook and tried to punt, but the green water was too deep and
entangled with great roots, s