She was
so dainty, so delightful, so serene. He began to recapitulate her
expressions, the light of her eyes, the turn of her face.. .

He wasn't good enough to walk in the same road with her. Nobody was.
Suppose they let him say good-bye to her; what could he say? That? But
they were sure not to let her talk to him alone; her mother would be
there as--what was it? Chaperone. He'd never once had a chance of saying
what he felt; indeed, it was only now he was beginning to realise what
he felt. Love I he wouldn't presume. It was worship. If only he could
have one more chance. He must have one more chance, somewhere, somehow.
Then he would pour out his soul to her eloquently. He felt eloquently,
and words would come. He was dust under her feet...

His meditation was interrupted by the click of a door handle, and Jessie
appeared in the sunlight under the verandah. "Come away from here," she
said to Hoopdriver, as he rose to meet her. "I'm going home with them.
We have to say good-bye."

Mr. Hoopdriver winced, opened and shut his mouth, and rose without a
word.

XL.

At first Jessie Milton and Mr. Hoopdriver walked away from the hotel in
silence. He heard a catching in her breath and glanced at her and saw
her ips pressed tight and a tear on her cheek. Her face was hot and
bright. She was looking straight before her. He could think of nothing
to say, and thrust his hands in his pockets and looked away from her
intentionally. After a while she began to talk. They dealt disjointedly
with scenery first, and then with the means of self-education. She took
his address at Antrobus's and promised to send him some books. But
even with that it was spiritless, aching talk, Hoopdriver felt, for
the fighting mood was over. She seemed, to him, preoccupied with the
memories of her late battle, and that appearance hurt him.

"It's the end," he whispered to himself. "It's the end."

They went into a hollow and up a gentle wooded slope, and came at last
to a high and open space overlooking a wide expanse of country. There,
by a common impulse, they stopped. She looked at her watch--a little
ostentatiously. They stared at the billows of forest rolling away
beneath them, crest beyond crest, of leafy trees, fading at last into
blue.

"The end" ran through his mind, to the exclusion of all speakable
thoughts.

"And so," she said, presently, breaking the silence, "it comes to
good-bye."

For half a minute he did not answer. Th