They went quietly on in the direction of the convent, anxious to be clear of the valley; discussing as they walked their plans for the immediate future. Sydney promised that if Tessa could spare her she would go back with Milton to England; though if Tessa seemed at all reluctant she should feel obliged to stay on another three or four weeks. They agreed to be married in June. ‘I do hope,’ she said, smiling doubtfully, ‘that I shan’t be utterly useless to you.’ Before they came out on to the road she stopped him again and said she was hungry and wanted to eat some more nuts. She took a handful of walnuts and almonds out of her pocket and he cracked them by twos for her, one against the other, between the palms of his hands.

‘I wonder why I can’t do that,’ she exclaimed; ‘my hands are really like iron! … I’ve been eating these on and off all today – they are better than lunch.’

‘Extraordinary idea!’ he exclaimed, and threw up his hands expressively. She replied that her day appeared to her to have been spent intelligently, and that she was not yet incapable of planning out a day for herself, though she could not answer for what might become of her after marriage.

He suggested that if she were not by now too tired and hungry they should, instead of returning tamely to the Hotel by the road, strike out across the base of the next two hills and drop down on the Hotel through the olive trees. The alacrity with which she jumped at this made him suspect her of flagging inwardly, but he did not dare to withdraw his suggestion. Seen again from the mouth of the valley the horizon, the suddenly revealed expanse of sky, appeared beyond all memory to have enlarged themselves. He could not have believed in such clear air. The afternoon was yet more coldly grey; the trees stood out from one another in the absolute distinctness of this hour before they should begin to run together into dusk. Under the opaque sky the sea was white, glassy except where now and then a hundred ripples gave the effect of a shiver. Here and there a cypress waited, dark among the olives. The evening had an ache about it, a hush of timelessness, and Milton wondered if he should forget this, too. They walked in the half-light of the olive trees, as thought deep down under water; Sydney’s face was pale, and some deception of shadow made it look melancholy, but the colours of her scarf burnt. ‘This is a wonderful thing,’ he said, and caught at the end of the scarf. ‘I love it. I like all the colours you wear, especially white——’

‘That’s not——’

‘Yes, it is. It’s the clearest and brightest. Don’t ever be frightened and muddled and dark, my dear, even in clothes.’