uld have been no
good going on. Two wrongs don't make a right."

"How old ARE you?" Clara asked.

"Twenty-five."

"And I am thirty," she said.

"I know you are."

"I shall be thirty-one--or AM I thirty-one?"

"I neither know nor care. What does it matter!"

They were at the entrance to the Grove. The wet, red track, already
sticky with fallen leaves, went up the steep bank between the grass.
On either side stood the elm-trees like pillars along a great aisle,
arching over and making high up a roof from which the dead leaves fell.
All was empty and silent and wet. She stood on top of the stile, and he
held both her hands. Laughing, she looked down into his eyes. Then she
leaped. Her breast came against his; he held her, and covered her face
with kisses.

They went on up the slippery, steep red path. Presently she released his
hand and put it round her waist.

"You press the vein in my arm, holding it so tightly," she said.

They walked along. His finger-tips felt the rocking of her breast. All
was silent and deserted. On the left the red wet plough-land showed
through the doorways between the elm-boles and their branches. On the
right, looking down, they could see the tree-tops of elms growing far
beneath them, hear occasionally the gurgle of the river. Sometimes
there below they caught glimpses of the full, soft-sliding Trent, and of
water-meadows dotted with small cattle.

"It has scarcely altered since little Kirke White used to come," he
said.

But he was watching her throat below the ear, where the flush was
fusing into the honey-white, and her mouth that pouted disconsolate. She
stirred against him as she walked, and his body was like a taut string.

Halfway up the big colonnade of elms, where the Grove rose highest above
the river, their forward movement faltered to an end. He led her across
to the grass, under the trees at the edge of the path. The cliff of red
earth sloped swiftly down, through trees and bushes, to the river that
glimmered and was dark between the foliage. The far-below water-meadows
were very green. He and she stood leaning against one another, silent,
afraid, their bodies touching all along. There came a quick gurgle from
the river below.

"Why," he asked at length, "did you hate Baxter Dawes?"

She turned to him with a splendid movement. Her mouth was offered him,
and her throat; her eyes were half-shut; her breast was tilted as if it
asked for him. He flashed with a small