“Love,” he said. “I have not been in love since I was your age.” He might have added, “Until now,” but had a moral obligation not to do this. Or persuaded himself of these larger considerations: that is generally the way. He must not match, from knowledge, the immeasurable solemnity of youth; he would be vigilant. The price of vigilance is eternal liberty. All the advantages being nevertheless hers, unrealized, even the intensity with which she trots along, two steps to his one. Montaigne playing with his cat wondered, Is she the plaything or am I?

The girl’s thoughts were all of marching—of route marches, forced marches, marches bearing packs and rifles, boots, boots, boots, the Children of Israel, the retreat from Moscow. A sense of proportion lightened the step only briefly: reasonableness, like the fatalism of the taipans leaning on their niblicks, could not be sustained. Napoleon had in any case ridden—like Sir Cecil. It was stupefying to think that Sir Cecil had done this repeatedly.

A shadow at the limit of vision resolved itself into spars of growth—a blur of hot bushes, not beautiful enough for a mirage. A dried, greenish stain spread with slow precision at the rate of their approach. I can do this, the girl promised herself, neither slackening nor accelerating the automatic placing of her feet, not taking stock of her sunstruck body nor in any way threatening by disruption of gait or posture her ability to arrive. There would be the descent to the sea, still, and the last slopes leading down to the hotel there. The arcades and awnings of the hotel veranda cast their hallucinatory shadow before: thirst escaped at last from agonizing confinement, overwhelming her in reckless foreknowledge of dripping tumbler and slaked throat. Imagination ran riot over orangeade and ginger beer.

She was proud not to have complained, to have swallowed without comment the stuff about salutary exhaustion. But, now the enterprise was assessable, she did marvel that this had been done to her. If I had collapsed, if there had been an accident … With a taste of repugnance, she thought how he had said, “You wanted to walk.” She hoped he was not going to give her grievances against him; she hoped, if so, she would not nurture them in the local tradition of the everlasting wrong.

The degree of thirst was a new experience, reductive as pain. Soldiers in the desert passed round a flask to wet their lips, not taking more than their honor-bound swallow—she had seen Gary Cooper in Beau Geste. He and she could have brought the flask, at least. Another black mark for Constantin, who, knowing every thing, had known how far, how hot.