‘Oh, why didn’t you?’ she exclaimed, then recovered herself confusedly. ‘I mean, doesn’t that make me seem horribly eager? But I had to, I couldn’t resist it; I couldn’t go on carrying this bomb about. They’ll all say, at home, “Well what has she done now?” They’ll be quite sure that there must be something wrong somewhere, because I somehow always just manage not to do anything right. All the people I like are rotters. I can’t pay my bills. If I don’t use my brains I get dissipated, and if I do use my brains I get ill. I wonder if you’ve any idea what I’m like – well, I don’t mean that exactly, I’m sure you’ve got heaps of ideas about me. But I don’t think you’re much good at outlines – you see a kind of haze of possibilities with a very faint nucleus. It’s a fatal combination, I’m sure, to be clever and kind; you can never see clear: it’s a sort of squint. The stupidest person out here could describe me immediately.’

‘I tell you one thing we have in common,’ said Milton – ‘we do both like running ourselves down. I shall never tell you what I’ve thought about myself – I couldn’t bear you to agree with me.’

‘I should hate you to believe all I’ve said. You never would, James, would you?’

‘Not while you look with those eyes——’

‘Oh, yes, yes, yes,’ she said, and, sighing and shutting her eyes, leaned her head on his shoulder. ‘I do love you.’ With his arm round her he began to speak impetuously, but she pressed a hand over his mouth to silence him, and kept it there while she went on: ‘There is nobody else in the world now, nobody else in the world. I’ve thought so much about you. I must be with you always. You’re so kind.’

He felt the hand tremble and drew it away to say: ‘Kind?’

‘Yes, kind. Do you think that is ordinary? Do you know, I thought you were never coming. I was so afraid, up here this afternoon, that you wouldn’t come at all. I thought you’d been sent away from me. I thought Some One knew better.’

‘Who could know better?’ he said, with a cold feeling.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, beginning to laugh. ‘I am an idiot. Come on, let’s walk faster; it’s beginning to be chilly. One loses one’s way in the day here when there’s no sun.’