passivity, in the feeling she
gave that to pressure she must yield.

For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees
dropping here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close on
grass, touched with the sparkle of the autumn rime? Then her charming
face grew eager, and, glancing round, with almost a lover's jealousy,
young Jolyon saw Bosinney striding across the grass.

Curiously he watched the meeting, the look in their eyes, the long
clasp of their hands. They sat down close together, linked for all their
outward discretion. He heard the rapid murmur of their talk; but what
they said he could not catch.

He had rowed in the galley himself! He knew the long hours of waiting
and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the tortures of suspense
that haunt the unhallowed lover.

It required, however, but a glance at their two faces to see that this
was none of those affairs of a season that distract men and women about
town; none of those sudden appetites that wake up ravening, and are
surfeited and asleep again in six weeks. This was the real thing! This
was what had happened to himself! Out of this anything might come!

Bosinney was pleading, and she so quiet, so soft, yet immovable in her
passivity, sat looking over the grass.

Was he the man to carry her off, that tender, passive being, who would
never stir a step for herself? Who had given him all herself, and would
die for him, but perhaps would never run away with him!

It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying: "But, darling,
it would ruin you!" For he himself had experienced to the full the
gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman's heart that she is a drag on
the man she loves.

And he peeped at them no more; but their soft, rapid talk came to
his ears, with the stuttering song of some bird who seemed trying to
remember the notes of spring: Joy--tragedy? Which--which?

And gradually their talk ceased; long silence followed.

'And where does Soames come in?' young Jolyon thought. 'People think she
is concerned about the sin of deceiving her husband! Little they know
of women! She's eating, after starvation--taking her revenge! And Heaven
help her--for he'll take his.'

He heard the swish of silk, and, spying round the laurel, saw them
walking away, their hands stealthily joined....

At the end of July old Jolyon had taken his grand-daughter to the
mountains; and on that visit (the last they ever paid) June rec