.

V

The summer passed, and always there was that little patch of silence in
her heart, and in his. The tall, bright days grew taller, slowly passed
their zenith, slowly shortened. On Saturdays and Sundays, sometimes with
Winton and little Gyp, but more often alone, they went on the river. For
Gyp, it had never lost the magic of their first afternoon upon it--never
lost its glamour as of an enchanted world. All the week she looked
forward to these hours of isolation with him, as if the surrounding
water secured her not only against a world that would take him from her,
if it could, but against that side of his nature, which, so long ago she
had named "old Georgian." She had once adventured to the law courts by
herself, to see him in his wig and gown. Under that stiff grey crescent
on his broad forehead, he seemed so hard and clever--so of a world to
which she never could belong, so of a piece with the brilliant bullying
of the whole proceeding. She had come away feeling that she only
possessed and knew one side of him. On the river, she had that side
utterly--her lovable, lazy, impudently loving boy, lying with his head
in her lap, plunging in for a swim, splashing round her; or with his
sleeves rolled up, his neck bare, and a smile on his face, plying his
slow sculls down-stream, singing, "Away, my rolling river," or puffing
home like a demon in want of his dinner. It was such a blessing to lose
for a few hours each week this growing consciousness that she could
never have the whole of him. But all the time the patch of silence grew,
for doubt in the heart of one lover reacts on the heart of the other.

When the long vacation came, she made an heroic resolve. He must go to
Scotland, must have a month away from her, a good long rest. And while
Betty was at the sea with little Gyp, she would take her father to his
cure. She held so inflexibly to this resolve, that, after many protests,
he said with a shrug:

"Very well, I will then--if you're so keen to get rid of me."

"Keen to get rid!" When she could not bear to be away from him! But she
forced her feeling back, and said, smiling:

"At last! There's a good boy!" Anything! If only it would bring him back
to her exactly as he had been. She asked no questions as to where, or to
whom, he would go.

Tunbridge Wells, that charming purgatory where the retired prepare their
souls for a more permanent retirement, was dreaming on its hills in long
rows of adequat