ring through a gap had rested in the plum-tree's
heart. It crowned the girl. Her raiment, the dark leaves, the red wall,
the golden plums, were woven by the passing glow to a block of pagan
colour. And her face above it, chaste, serene, was like the scentless
summer evening. A bird amongst the currant bushes kept a little chant
vibrating; and all the plum-tree's shape and colour seemed alive.

"Perhaps he does n't want to be a gentleman," said Shelton.

Antonia swung her foot.

"How can he help wanting to?"

"He may have a different philosophy of life."

Antonia was slow to answer.

"I know nothing about philosophies of life," she said at last.

Shelton answered coldly,

"No two people have the same."

With the falling sun-glow the charm passed off the tree. Chilled and
harder, yet less deep, it was no more a block of woven colour, warm and
impassive, like a southern goddess; it was now a northern tree, with a
grey light through its leaves.

"I don't understand you in the least," she said; "everyone wishes to be
good."

"And safe?" asked Shelton gently.

Antonia stared.

"Suppose," he said--"I don't pretend to know, I only suppose--what
Ferrand really cares for is doing things differently from other people?
If you were to load him with a character and give him money on condition
that he acted as we all act, do you think he would accept it?"

"Why not?"

"Why are n't cats dogs; or pagans Christians?"

Antonia slid down from the wall.

"You don't seem to think there 's any use in trying," she said, and
turned away.

Shelton made a movement as if he would go after her, and then stood
still, watching her figure slowly pass, her head outlined above the
wall, her hands turned back across her narrow hips. She halted at the
bend, looked back, then, with an impatient gesture, disappeared.

Antonia was slipping from him!

A moment's vision from without himself would have shown him that it
was he who moved and she who was standing still, like the figure of one
watching the passage of a stream with clear, direct, and sullen eyes.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RIVER

One day towards the end of August Shelton took Antonia on the river--the
river that, like soft music, soothes the land; the river of the reeds
and poplars, the silver swan-sails, sun and moon, woods, and the white
slumbrous clouds; where cuckoos, and the wind, the pigeons, and the
weirs are always singing; and in the flash of naked bodies, th