ough Iffley lock and under
the green hill crowned with Iffley village and its Norman church. The hay
was out in the fields, and the air was full of it. Children, in tidy
Sunday frocks, ran along the towing-path to look at them; a reflected
heaven smiled upon them from the river depths; wild rose-bushes overhung
the water, and here and there stray poplars rose like land-marks into
the sky. The heat, after a time, deadened conversation. Forbes every now
and then would break out with some comment on the moving landscape, which
showed the delicacy and truth of his painter's sense, or set the boat
alive with laughter by some story of the unregenerate Oxford of his own
undergraduate days; but there were long stretches of silence when, except
to the rowers, the world seemed asleep, and the regular fall of the oars
like the pulsing of a hot dream.

It was past five before they steered into the shadow of Nuneham woods.
The meadows just ahead were a golden blaze of light, but here the shade
lay deep and green on the still water, spanned by a rustic bridge, and
broken every now and then by the stately whiteness of the swans. Rich
steeply-rising woods shut in the left-hand bank, and foliage, grass, and
wild flowers seemed suddenly to have sprung into a fuller luxuriance than
elsewhere.

'It's too early for tea,' said Mrs. Stuart's clear little voice on the
bank; 'at least, if we have it directly it will leave such a long time
before the train starts. Wouldn't a stroll be pleasant first?'

Isabel Bretherton and Kendal only waited for the general assent before
they wandered off ahead of the others. 'I should like very much to have a
word with you,' she had said to him as he handed her out of the boat. And
now, here they were, and, as Kendal felt, the critical moment was come.

'I only wanted to tell you,' she said, as they paused in the heart of the
wood, a little out of breath after a bit of steep ascent, 'that I have
got hold of a play for next October that I think you are rather specially
interested in--at least, Mr. Wallace told me you had heard it all, and
given him advice about it while he was writing it. I want so much to hear
your ideas about it. It always seems to me that you have thought more
about the stage and seen more acting than any one else I know, and I care
for your opinion very much indeed--do tell me, if you will, what you
thought of _Elvira!_'

'Well,' said Kendal quietly, as he made her give up her wrap to h