“Well, what do you think of our cousins?”

“He’s a good chap. I thought he seemed rather gone on you.’”

“Did you now? When would you like them to come over?”

“Any time.”

“Next week?”

“Yes.”

Seeing that he did not mean to be drawn, she lapsed into savouring the day’s slowly sinking light and beauty. The high land, Wantage, and Faringdon way, was glamoured by level sunlight; and Wittenham Clumps bastioned-up the rise ahead. Rounding to the right, they came on the bridge. In the middle of it she touched his arm:

“That stretch up there is where we saw the kingfishers, Hubert; d’you remember?”

Halted, they gazed up the quiet river, deserted and fit for the bright birds. Falling light sprinkled it through willows on the southern bank. The quietest river, it seemed, in the world, most subdued to the moods of men, flowing with an even clear stream among bright fields and those drooping shapely trees; having, as it were, a bland intensity of being, a presence of its own, gracious and apart.

“Three thousand years ago,” said Hubert suddenly, “this old river used to be like those I’ve seen in the wilds, an unshaped flow of water in matted jungle.”

He drove on. They had their backs to the sunlight now, and it was like driving into what had been painted for them.

And so they sped on, while into the sky crept the sunset glow, and the cleaned-up fields darkened a little, and gathered loneliness under the evening flight of birds.

At the door of Condaford Grange Dinny got out, humming: “‘She was a shepherdess oh! so fair’,” and looking into her brother’s face. He was, however, busy with the car and did not appear to see the connection.

The outline of a young Englishman of the inarticulate variety is difficult to grasp. The vocal variety is easily enough apprehended. Its manners and habits bulk large to the eye and have but little importance in the national life. Vociferous, critical, ingenious, knowing and advertising only its own kind, it forms an iridescence shimmering over the surface of the bog, and disguising the peat below. It constantly and brilliantly expresses almost nothing; while those whose lives are spent in the application of trained energy remain invisible, but none the less solid; for feelings continually voiced cease to be feelings, and feelings never voiced deepen with their dumbness. Hubert did not look solid, nor was he stolid; even those normal aids to the outline of the inarticulate were absent. Trained, sensitive, and no fool, he was capable of passing quiet judgment on people and events that would have surprised the vocal, but, except to himself, he never passed it. Till quite recently, indeed, he had lacked time and opportunity; but seeing him in a smoking-room, at a dinner-table, or wherever the expressive scintillate, you would know at once that neither time nor opportunity was going to make him vociferous. Going into the war, so early, as a professional, he had missed the expanding influences of the ‘Varsity and London. Eight years in Mesopotamia, Egypt and India, a year of illness and the Hallorsen expedition, had given him a remote, drawn, rather embittered look. He was of the temperament that, in idleness, eats its heart out. With dog and gun or on a horse, he found it bearable, but only just; and without those adventitious aids he wilted. Three days after the return to Condaford he came to Dinny on the terrace, with ‘The Times’ in his hand.

“Look at this!”

Dinny read:

“Very handsome!” said Dinny, trembling a little. “Hallorsen in London! What the devil does he mean by this all of a sudden?”

She began pulling yellowed leaves out of an Agapanthus. The danger of doing things for other people was being disclosed to her.

“It almost looks like repentance, dear.”

“That fellow repent! Not he! There’s something behind it.”

“Yes, I am.”

“You!”

Dinny quailed behind her smile.

“I met Hallorsen at Diana’s in London; he was at Lippinghall, too. So I—er—got at him.”

Hubert’s sallowed face went red.

“You asked—you begged—?”

“Oh! no!”

“What then?”

“He seemed to take rather a fancy to me. It’s odd, but I couldn’t help it, Hubert.”

“He’s done this to curry favour with you?”

“You put it like a man and a brother.”

“Dinny!”

Dinny flushed too, angry now behind her smile.

“I didn’t lead him on. He took this highly unreasonable fancy, in spite of plenty of cold water. But, if you ask me, Hubert, he has quite a decent side to him.”

“You would naturally think so,” said Hubert, coldly. His face had resumed its sallow hue and was even a little ashened.

Dinny caught impulsively at his sleeve.

“Don’t be silly, dear! If he chooses to make a public apology for any reason, even such a bad one, isn’t it all to the good?”

“Not when my own sister comes into it. In this thing I’m like—I’m like a—” he put his hands to his head: “I’m in Chancery. Anyone can punch my head, and I can’t move.”

Dinny’s coolness had come back to her.

“You needn’t be afraid that I shall compromise you. This letter is very good news; it takes the wind out of the whole thing. In face of this apology, who can say anything?”

But Hubert, leaving the paper in her hand, went back into the house.

Dinny had practically no ‘small’ pride. Her sense of humour prevented her from attaching value to her own performances. She felt that she ought to have provided against this contingency, though she did not see how.

Hubert’s resentment was natural enough. If Hallorsen’s apology had been dictated by conviction, it would have soothed him; arising from a desire to please his sister, it was only the more galling; and he clearly abhorred the Professor’s fancy for her. Still, there was the letter—an open and direct admission of false criticism, which changed the whole position! At once she began to consider what use could be made of it. Should she send it to Lord Saxenden? Having meddled so far, she decided that she would, and went in to write the covering letter.