much to himself as to Rachel. He was
reasoning against the desire, which had returned with intensity, to take
her in his arms; to have done with indirectness; to explain exactly what
he felt. What he said was against his belief; all the things that were
important about her he knew; he felt them in the air around them; but he
said nothing; he went on arranging the stones.

"I like you; d'you like me?" Rachel suddenly observed.

"I like you immensely," Hewet replied, speaking with the relief of a
person who is unexpectedly given an opportunity of saying what he wants
to say. He stopped moving the pebbles.

"Mightn't we call each other Rachel and Terence?" he asked.

"Terence," Rachel repeated. "Terence--that's like the cry of an owl."

She looked up with a sudden rush of delight, and in looking at Terence
with eyes widened by pleasure she was struck by the change that had come
over the sky behind them. The substantial blue day had faded to a paler
and more ethereal blue; the clouds were pink, far away and closely
packed together; and the peace of evening had replaced the heat of the
southern afternoon, in which they had started on their walk.

"It must be late!" she exclaimed.

It was nearly eight o'clock.

"But eight o'clock doesn't count here, does it?" Terence asked, as they
got up and turned inland again. They began to walk rather quickly down
the hill on a little path between the olive trees.

They felt more intimate because they shared the knowledge of what eight
o'clock in Richmond meant. Terence walked in front, for there was not
room for them side by side.

"What I want to do in writing novels is very much what you want to do
when you play the piano, I expect," he began, turning and speaking over
his shoulder. "We want to find out what's behind things, don't we?--Look
at the lights down there," he continued, "scattered about anyhow. Things
I feel come to me like lights. . . . I want to combine them. . . . Have
you ever seen fireworks that make figures? . . . I want to make figures.
. . . Is that what you want to do?"

Now they were out on the road and could walk side by side.

"When I play the piano? Music is different. . . . But I see what you
mean." They tried to invent theories and to make their theories agree.
As Hewet had no knowledge of music, Rachel took his stick and drew
figures in the thin white dust to explain how Bach wrote his fugues.

"My musical gift was ruined," he explained, as they