know, few lovers can have such
wonderful hours as the hours we do have."

Easily she reassured him with her confidence in the rightness of his
decision; easily she assuaged the ache of any lingering doubt with the
proclamation of that inevitable triumph in the end.

"But we must be engaged openly," said Guy. "You know I shall be
twenty-three next month. Do you think we can be engaged properly in
August?"

"Mother promised in Spring," said Pauline. "Why don't you talk to her
about it? Why don't you talk to her about it now? She loves you to talk
to her."

He looked round to where Mrs. Grey was sitting in a deck-chair;
evidently by the rhythmic motion of her fingers she was restating to
herself a tune which had formerly pleased her, as the barge glided on
past a scene that changed perceptibly only in details of flowers and
trees, while the great sky and the green hollow land and the blue
distances rested immutable. Guy came and sat beside her.

"I've never enjoyed a fortnight so much in my life," he said.

She smiled at him but did not speak, for whatever quartet she was
restating had to be finished first. Soon the last noiseless bars played
themselves and she turned round to his conversation.

"Mrs. Grey, do you think that Pauline and I can be engaged openly next
month? It won't mean, if we are, that I shall be worrying to see her
more often. In fact, I'm sure I shall worry less. But I want to tell my
father, so that when he comes here he'll be able to see Pauline. He's a
conventional sort of man, and I don't think he'd grasp an engagement
such as ours is at present. Besides, I want to talk to the Rector,
because I feel that now he regards the whole thing as a childish game.
So can it be formal next month?"

Mrs. Grey sat back, so silent that Guy wondered if she had listened to a
word he had been saying. He paused for a moment, and then, as she did
not reply, he went on:

"I also want to say how sorry I am that I asked Pauline to come into
Plashers Mead to say good night to me last month. I didn't realize,
until she told me you were angry about it, what a foolish thing I'd
done. I don't want you to think that, if we are formally engaged, I
shall be doing stupid things like that all the time. Really, Mrs. Grey,
I would always be very thoughtful."

"Oh yes," she answered in her nervous way. "Oh yes. I understood it to
have been a kind of carelessness. But I had to speak to Pauline about
it, because she is so