n go out for the day; it is a
favourite walk."

He was silent, and did not move. He seemed prepossessed and anxious,
taking no note of the beauty of the scene around him.

"How is Mrs. Cardew?"

"She is well, I believe."

"You have not left home this morning, then?"

"No; I was not at home last night."

"I think I must be going."

"I will walk a little way with you."

"My way is over the bridge to the farmhouse, where I am staying."

"I will go as far as you go."

Catharine turned towards the bridge.

"Is it the house beyond the meadows?"

"Yes."

It is curious how indifferent conversation often is just at the moment
when the two who are talking may be trembling with passion.

"You should have brought Mrs. Cardew with you," said Catharine, tearing
to pieces a water lily, and letting the beautiful white petals fall bit
by bit into the river.

Mr. Cardew looked at her steadfastly, scrutinisingly, but her eyes were
on the thunderclouds, and the lily fell faster and faster. The face of
this girl had hovered before him for weeks, day and night. He never for
a moment proposed to himself deliberate love for her--he could not do it,
and yet he had come there, not, perhaps, consciously in order to find
her, but dreaming of her all the time. He was literally possessed. The
more he thought about her, the less did he see and hear of the world
outside him, and no motive for action found access to him which was not
derived from her. Of course it was all utterly mad and unreasonable,
for, after all, what did he really know about her, and what was there in
her to lay hold of him with such strength? But, alas! thus it was, thus
he was made; so much the worse for him. Was this a Christian believer?
was he really sincere in his belief? He was sincere with a sincerity, to
speak arithmetically, of the tenth power beyond that of his exemplary
churchwarden Johnson, whose religion would have restrained him from
anything warmer than the extension of a Sunday black-gloved finger-tip to
any woman save "Mrs. J." Here he was by the riverside with her; he was
close to her; nobody was present, but he could not stir nor speak!
Catharine felt his gaze, although her eyes were not towards him. At last
the lily came to an end and she tossed the naked stalk after the flower.
She loved this man; it was a perilous moment: one touch, a hair's breadth
of oscillation, and the two would have been one. At such a crisis the
least ex