chalk-pit and
Jacob's ladder, onto the field path and so to the river-bank. And he had
taken her ever so gently round the waist, still silent, waiting for that
moment when his heart would leap out of him in words and hers--he was
sure--would leap to meet it. The path entered a thicket of blackthorn,
with a few primroses close to the little river running full and gentle.
The last drops of a shower were falling, but the sun had burst through,
and the sky above the thicket was cleared to the blue of speedwell
flowers. Suddenly she had stopped and cried: "Look, Dick! Oh, look! It's
heaven!" A high bush of blackthorn was lifted there, starry white
against the blue and that bright cloud. It seemed to sing, it was so
lovely; the whole of Spring was in it. But the sight of her ecstatic
face had broken down all his restraint; and tightening his arm round
her, he had kissed her lips. He remembered still the expression of her
face, like a child's startled out of sleep. She had gone rigid, gasped,
started away from him; quivered and gulped, and broken suddenly into
sobs. Then, slipping from his arm, she had fled. He had stood at first,
amazed and hurt, utterly bewildered; then, recovering a little, had
hunted for her full half an hour before at last he found her sitting on
wet grass, with a stony look on her face. He had said nothing, and she
nothing, except to murmur: "Let's go on; we shall miss our train!" And
all the rest of that day and the day after, until they parted, he had
suffered from the feeling of having tumbled down off some high perch in
her estimation. He had not liked it at all; it had made him very angry.
Never from that day to this had he thought of it as anything but a piece
of wanton prudery. Had it--had it been something else?

He looked at the four pink berries, and, as if they had uncanny power to
turn the wheel of memory, he saw another vision of his cousin five years
later. He was married by then, and already hung on the line. With his
wife he had gone down to Alicia's country cottage. A summer night, just
dark and very warm. After many exhortations she had brought into the
little drawing-room her last finished picture. He could see her now
placing it where the light fell, her tall slight form already rather
sharp and meagre, as the figures of some women grow at thirty, if they
are not married; the nervous, fluttering look on her charming face, as
though she could hardly bear this inspection; the way she rai