Well, he said.

Well.

She patted, with unconcern, the sweating neck of the strawberry roan.

I’m late, he said.

No, she said, quickly, gratefully. No. I’ve just this minute arrived.

Because it was like that, telescoped entirely, the whole quarter of an hour. For a long time it was like that with Willy Standish, for many quarter-hours.

Get in, he said.

She had.

You look ripping, said Willy Standish.

Receiving this, it was almost an original remark.

Willy! she gasped.

His cheek was cold, and beyond the cold, it was smelling of shaving soap.

Willy, she said, it’s good. I nearly died leaving the house. And they know, of course. They know. Don’t make her go so fast. Not in this wind. Please! Because my hat.

It was altogether exhilarating, the motion, and the wind, and the branch that scraped her cheek. She gave him one of those intimate glances that are more possessive than the clasped hand. Supporting herself on the leather of the dog-cart, on the side that was not his, her fingers strained with elation. They drove on under flying trees.

Never tired of remembering it was only last summer, she had to restrain herself now from making the remark. It was only last summer, in the lull between croquet and archery, that the rambling voice of Mrs de Vere said: Kitty, whom don’t you know, let us see, this is Captain Standish, I think that everyone else, I think yes, Captain Standish is the only stranger in our midst, now where are the arrows, Eddie, surely they brought them out of the shed. You looked away from a new face, after the appropriate smile, into the placid, less disturbing one, of old Mrs de Vere. There were ripples in the lawn from a recent mowing, the decapitated daisies, chairs beneath the copper beeches, she saw, and Mrs de Vere in an unfortunate hat. Mrs de Vere was rich. She was kind. Floating up affably from the early life of Mrs Goose, and accepting the misalliance as a Christian, she sometimes asked Kitty to her house. She liked to have young people in her house, believing mistakenly that this was a pleasure for her son. Eddie embarrassed, embarrassed everyone else. And handing tea, offering a mallet, trundling largely with arrows from the shed, Eddie was perpetually embarrassed. Eddie made Kitty giggle. His large and spongy, priestly hands. He started up the uneasy suspicion he might be Going into the Church. Not that anyone minded, really. It was just the state of suspense that you deplored. If only Eddie would declare intentions, everyone would feel relieved. But the state of suspense, of speaking in a lowered voice. Even the indulgent Mrs de Vere felt herself compelled to tread softly, so as not to disturb what might be hatching in her offspring’s mind. As a mother she would cheerfully have given him anything he had asked, the whole Church if he had wanted it, holding it out on the palm of her hand, like something from an allegorical group. But Eddie, remaining embarrassed, continued to read St Augustine, in a sun hat, in the shrubbery.