But above all, Willy was the tilted hat on summer afternoons. From under a tilted hat he looked at her, this girl on the lawn at Mrs de Vere’s that made him realize he wasn’t bored, packed off to archery, if you please, stuck for a summer afternoon. Then this girl in a sailor hat and a veil, trying not to be freckled, she was the freckling sort, and giggly, through the bitten lip, and conscious of herself, the way she jumped when their hands touched picking up an arrow in the long grass. Already mentally you rehearsed the hand following the line of neck, the mouth pressed into the groove of mouth. The sudden violent desire to do, say something, in the absence of tail feathers, that would arrest this wandering glance. But she darted away in words, telling stories that made the others laugh, laughing herself, acting a little pantomime for almost everyone. Then he told the story of the rope trick, he had to tell something, and everybody listened, they asked questions, everybody interested. But she looked at the bottom of her glass. He followed the movement of her ankle, tossing gently from a deck chair. Her eyes were fixed intently on the bottom of the glass. Perhaps, said Mrs de Vere, when it was all over, when the hands were sticky with lemonade, when another arrow was a sight too many, and people were in the first mumble of departure, perhaps Captain Standish could make a detour and drop you, Kitty, said Mrs de Vere, an unconsciously amiable strawberry ice. Perhaps it would be out of Captain Standish’s way, she said in a rush of breath, in a desperate manipulation of veils, looking at no one but Mrs de Vere.

But without escape, there remained the isolation of the dogcart. His hands upon the reins. And then the slow, consoling silence. Sometimes, she said, on summer evenings she was reconciled to being herself. He agreed to the possibility of this. He had felt it himself, most memorably once at sea, passing a moonlit Crete, and again in the hills of India, where in the upper hills at sunset the snow became a copper pink. Then they drove a bit, and knew there would be a second meeting. He put her down in the lane, in the bend above Little Swaffham. She looked up at him, smiling, giving it right into his face.

So that in retrospect, as well as in the present moment, the dog-cart was a kind of link, linking them physically as they moved through the lanes of their relationship.

Willy, I’m terrified, she said now, and he could feel it in her hand as they passed beyond gates into the upward sweep of grassland that lay between the road and the first sight of gardens.

There were too many trees, she felt, larger than other trees, in this parkland, the unmoved oaks and labouring elms. The sky froze in the deepening afternoon. And then the house, which was already frozen, the steps her feet touched between stony columns. Her mind stripped ready for each impression, recoiled as it encountered them. I am part of this, she told herself without conviction, already speeding a guest from a terrace, hallmarked with the pearls she would wear, at home in pictures in the papers, perhaps talking to a duchess. But it was wrong. Wrong to walk into a waiting house, even with Willy who belonged in it, walking in like a thief, into its large rooms, with their fringe of insolent furniture. He left her a moment, and she stood, this thief, fingering her own furs, bludgeoned by a clock. Reminded by the furs, she knew she was a snob, rejected it at once, her breath rose, she wanted to possess this atmosphere, take it with brilliance, and make it her own. Should they go in, he asked, returning. Yes, she supposed, yes.