and unfair, and thought an apology should take a practical
shape.'

'Oh yes.'

Elfride was sorry--she could not tell why--that he gave such a
legitimate reason. It was a disappointment that he had all the time a
cool motive, which might be stated to anybody without raising a smile.
Had she known they were offered in that spirit, she would certainly
have accepted the seductive gift. And the tantalizing feature was that
perhaps he suspected her to imagine them offered as a lover's token,
which was mortifying enough if they were not.

Mrs. Swancourt came now to where they were sitting, to select a flat
boulder for spreading their table-cloth upon, and, amid the discussion
on that subject, the matter pending between Knight and Elfride was
shelved for a while. He read her refusal so certainly as the bashfulness
of a girl in a novel position, that, upon the whole, he could tolerate
such a beginning. Could Knight have been told that it was a sense of
fidelity struggling against new love, whilst no less assuring as to his
ultimate victory, it might have entirely abstracted the wish to secure
it.

At the same time a slight constraint of manner was visible between
them for the remainder of the afternoon. The tide turned, and they were
obliged to ascend to higher ground. The day glided on to its end with
the usual quiet dreamy passivity of such occasions--when every deed done
and thing thought is in endeavouring to avoid doing and thinking
more. Looking idly over the verge of a crag, they beheld their stone
dining-table gradually being splashed upon and their crumbs and
fragments all washed away by the incoming sea. The vicar drew a moral
lesson from the scene; Knight replied in the same satisfied strain. And
then the waves rolled in furiously--the neutral green-and-blue tongues
of water slid up the slopes, and were metamorphosed into foam by a
careless blow, falling back white and faint, and leaving trailing
followers behind.

The passing of a heavy shower was the next scene--driving them to
shelter in a shallow cave--after which the horses were put in, and they
started to return homeward. By the time they reached the higher levels
the sky had again cleared, and the sunset rays glanced directly upon
the wet uphill road they had climbed. The ruts formed by their
carriage-wheels on the ascent--a pair of Liliputian canals--were as
shining bars of gold, tapering to nothing in the distance. Upon this
also they turned their back