w
he suffered! He turned away, toward Whitehall. Two men he knew stopped
to bandy a jest. One of them was just married. They, too, were off to
Scotland for the twelfth. Pah! How stale and flat seemed that which
till then had been the acme of the whole year to him! Ah, but if he had
been going to Scotland WITH HER! He drew his breath in with a sigh that
nearly removed the Home Office.

Oblivious of the gorgeous sentries at the Horse Guards, oblivious of all
beauty, he passed irresolute along the water, making for their usual
seat; already, in fancy, he was sitting there, prodding at the gravel, a
nervous twittering in his heart, and that eternal question: Dare I speak?
asking itself within him. And suddenly he saw that she was before him,
sitting there already. His heart gave a jump. No more craning--he WOULD
speak!

She was wearing a maize-coloured muslin to which the sunlight gave a sort
of transparency, and sat, leaning back, her knees crossed, one hand
resting on the knob of her furled sunshade, her face half hidden by her
shady hat. Summerhay clenched his teeth, and went straight up to her.

"Gyp! No, I won't call you anything else. This can't go on! You know
it can't. You know I worship you! If you can't love me, I've got to
break away. All day, all night, I think and dream of nothing but you.
Gyp, do you want me to go?"

Suppose she said: "Yes, go!" She made a little movement, as if in
protest, and without looking at him, answered very low:

"Of course I don't want you to go. How could I?"

Summerhay gasped.

"Then you DO love me?"

She turned her face away.

"Wait, please. Wait a little longer. When we come back I'll tell you: I
promise!"

"So long?"

"A month. Is that long? Please! It's not easy for me." She smiled
faintly, lifted her eyes to him just for a second. "Please not any more
now."

That evening at his club, through the bluish smoke of cigarette after
cigarette, he saw her face as she had lifted it for that one second; and
now he was in heaven, now in hell.

VI

The verandahed bungalow on the South Coast, built and inhabited by an
artist friend of Aunt Rosamund's, had a garden of which the chief feature
was one pine-tree which had strayed in advance of the wood behind. The
little house stood in solitude, just above a low bank of cliff whence the
beach sank in sandy ridges. The verandah and thick pine wood gave ample
shade, and the beach all the sun