ng flickered in the sky, and the thunder gave a
far more immediate response. That big coppery cloud which had been low
on the horizon had spread upwards over the heavens with astonishing
speed, and even as the thunder crackled a few big drops of rain splashed
on the river outside their shelter under the chestnuts. The storm was
quickly coming closer, and a big tree, as Jeannie remembered, is not a
very desirable neighbourhood under the circumstances.

"We had better get home," she said. "There is going to be a storm."

He jumped up at once, loosed the chain, and with a few swift strokes
took them back into the boathouse. There was no time just then for
further conversation, and Jeannie, at any rate, did not wish for it. But
it was as she had feared. All that she had done hitherto was nothing;
the calamity she wished to avert had not yet been averted.

One thing only she had gained at present, the footing of a friend.
Already, she was sure, he valued that, and on that she would have to
build. But it was a precarious task; she could not see her way yet. Only
she knew that such friendship as she had already formed with him was
not enough. He was not detached from Daisy yet. For the last forty-eight
hours, it is true, he had almost completely left her alone, but that was
not enough. He still intended to marry her.

Jeannie went straight to her room on gaining the house, under pretence
of changing her dress, which even in those few yards across from the
boathouse had got wet with the first rain of the storm. But she wanted
not that so much as to sit by herself and think. Matters were not so
easy as she had hoped, for she knew now that she had let herself believe
that by the mere formation of a friendship with her, she could lead him
away from Daisy. And now, for the first time, she saw how futile such a
hope had been. He could, in the pleasure of this new friendship, be
somewhat markedly inattentive to Daisy for a day or two, but it could
not permanently detach him. She must seem to offer something more than
mere friendship.

That he was seriously in love with Daisy she did not wholly believe,
but he meant to marry her; he meant, anyhow, to ask her to marry him,
and Alice, who knew better than she what Daisy felt, was sure that
Daisy would accept him. But something more than a mere flirtation was
required; matters, she saw now, had to go deeper than that. She must
make herself essential to him, and then, when he knew tha