“Actually,” said Carolyn suddenly, “my past is quite presentable. Not at all the sort of thing that most people imagine about the actress gay. It began in a parsonage, went on in a stock drama company, then repertory, then London. I went through the mill, you know. All sorts of queer little touring companies where one had to give a hand with the props, help on the stage, almost bring the curtain down on one’s own lines.”

“Help on the stage? You don’t mean you had to lug that scenery about?”

“Yes, I do. I could run up a box-set as well as most people. Flick the toggle-cords over the hooks, drop the back-cloth—everything. Oh, but how lovely that is! How lovely!”

They had now left all the houses behind them. The road wound upwards through round green hills whose firm margins cut across each other like the curve of a simple design. As Carolyn spoke, they turned a corner, and from behind this sequence of rounded greens rose the mountain, cold and intractable against a brilliant sky. They travelled fast, and the road turned continually, so that the hills and the mountain seemed to march solemnly about in a rhythm too large to be comprehensible. Presently Alleyn and Carolyn came to a narrow bridge and a pleasant little hinterland through which hurried a stream in a wide and stony bed.

“I thought we might stop here,” said Alleyn.

“I should like to do that.”

He drove along a rough track that led down to the river-bed, and stopped in the shadow of thick white flowering manuka shrubs, honey-scented.

They got out of the car and instead of the stuffiness of leather and petrol they found a smooth freshness of air with a tang of snow in it. Carolyn, an incongruous figure in her smart dress, stood with her face raised.

“It smells clean.”

The flat stones were hot in the sun, and a heat-haze wavered above the river-bed. The air was alive with the voice of the stream. They walked over the stones, over springy lichen, and patches of dry grass, to the border of the creek where the grass was greener. Here there were scattered prickly shrubs and sprawling bushes, that farther upstream led into a patch of dark trees.

“It must have been forested at one time,” said Alleyn. “There are burnt tree stumps all over these hills.”

And from the trees came the voice of a solitary bird, a slow cadence, deeper than any they had ever heard, ringing, remote and cool, above the sound of water. Carolyn stopped to listen. Suddenly Alleyn realised that she was deeply moved and that her eyes had filled with tears.

“I’ll go back for the luncheon basket,” he said, “if you’ll find a place for us to sit. Here’s the rug.”