stion of thunderstorm. When the
storm broke she would be better; till then smelling-salts would not
help her.

"It's quite darling of you, Aunt Jeannie," she had forced herself to say
at the end, with a cordiality that was somewhat hard to put into her
voice; "but, really, I would sooner be alone. It isn't a bad headache
either--only just a thunder one."

There was a window-seat in her room, well lined with cushions, and
looking over the river, and it was here that Daisy was rather uneasily
reclining herself. She had first tried lying on her bed, but the room
was too airless except close by the window to be tolerable. Partly that,
partly (half an hour ago) the sound of voices outside, had made her come
over here, and it was to see what was happening to those whom she had
heard talking, as well as to get what air there was, that kept her here
now.

A breath-holding immobility lay over river and garden; no quiver moved
in the aspens or shook the leaf-clad towers of the elms and chestnuts.
It was as if, instead of being clad in soft and sensitive foliage,
they were cast in iron. No note of birds came from the bushes, no
ripple broke the metallic hardness of the river, and the reflections
of the loose-strife and tall grasses along its edges, and the clump
of chestnuts on the little promontory at the corner of the garden,
were as clear-cut and unwavering as if they had been enamelled on
steel. There was no atmosphere in the day; no mist or haze, in spite
of the heat, shrouded or melted the distances; the trees and
house-roofs of Maidenhead a mile away seemed as if a stretched-out
finger could be laid on them. They were of Noah's Ark size; it was
only minuteness that showed their remoteness.

There was a punt underneath these chestnuts at the corner of the garden,
partly concealed by the low sweep of the boughs. Half an hour ago Daisy
had heard Aunt Jeannie's voice below her window saying, "Yes, with
pleasure. But we shall be wise not to go far, as I am sure there will be
a storm." It was at that that Daisy had left her bed and come across to
the window-seat, to see with whom Aunt Jeannie was not going far. But
before she had got there another voice had told her who it was. They had
not gone far; they had gone about fifty yards from the boathouse.

She could see the lines of the punt among the leaves; there was a great
pile of crimson cushions and a woman's figure dressed in grey. In front
of it sat a man's figure in fl