“It was our last chance almost,” she answered with as frank a quality of avowal. “I’m going home to London on Monday.”
“I knew,” he cried in triumph. “To Clapham?” he asked.
“Yes. I have got a situation. You did not know that I was a shorthand clerk and typewriter, did you? I am. I have just left the school, the Grogram School. And now there is an old gentleman who wants an amanuensis.”
“So you know shorthand?” said he. “That accounts for the stylographic pen. Those lines were written.... I have them still.”
She smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Here,” said Mr. Lewisham, tapping his breast-pocket.
“This lane,” he said—their talk was curiously inconsecutive—“some way along this lane, over the hill and down, there is a gate, and that goes—I mean, it opens into the path that runs along the river bank. Have you been?”
“No,” she said.
“It’s the best walk about Whortley. It brings you out upon Immering Common. You must—before you go.”
“Now?” she said with her eyes dancing.
“Why not?”
“I told Mrs. Frobisher I should be back by four,” she said.
“It’s a walk not to be lost.”
“Very well,” said she.
“The trees are all budding,” said Mr. Lewisham, “the rushes are shooting, and all along the edge of the river there are millions of little white flowers floating on the water, I don’t know the names of them, but they’re fine.... May I carry that branch of blossom?”
As he took it their hands touched momentarily ... and there came another of those significant gaps.
“Look at those clouds,” said Lewisham abruptly, remembering the remark he had been about
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