‘It would do your cousin a vast deal of good to run away from that feather-weight husband of hers. Look shocked, if you choose; I am in earnest. I consider,’ said Marjorie, displaying her worldly wisdom with gravity, ‘that Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot’s character is thoroughly spoilt. He is a charming fellow, doubtless. Still, everybody need not remind him of his charm to his face.’ ‘And you believe in retributive morality? You think the curative treatment for a charming fellow is--that his wife should run away from him?’ ‘My experience of charming fellows would incline me towards heroic treatment. As we walked up from Langrune I asked Mrs. Arbuthnot to start with me on foot for Spain. With twenty francs in our pocket, I told her, and doing a day’s work on the road whenever our resources ran low, we might get down safe to the frontier in time. But Mrs. Arbuthnot did not seem to see it.’ ‘Dinah’s is not an adventurous spirit. If you would accept a substitute, Miss Bartrand, perhaps I----’ ‘Go on, pray.’ ‘Might be allowed to follow, with a thick stick, at a distance.’ ‘Keep your stick for England! I would not be afraid on the loneliest road between this and Barcelona.’ ‘Without the stick, then--shall we start?’ Marjorie shifted her posture a little. She became suddenly interested in a plant of marshmallow at her side. ‘When next I enter Spain, Mr. Arbuthnot, it shall be with dignity. When I meet my mother’s people I hope to be armed with degrees, certificates--whatever the English universities will confer on me.’ ‘Don’t go until your name has been bracketed high on the list of wranglers.’ As Geoffrey made this venture on thin ice he watched his pupil narrowly. One of the storm-flashes that lit Marjorie Bartrand’s face into such frequent, such perilous beauty, was his reward. ‘You mean--never go at all! Do you feel a pleasure, Mr. Arbuthnot, in throwing cold water over my dearest hopes and ambitions?’ ‘An enormous pleasure, Miss Bartrand. I have felt it from that first evening when you were good enough to hire me as your teacher at Tintajeux.’ The girl looked away from him, her colour changing. ‘That evening, when I had to receive you in state, to make formal speeches and curtsies, all my great-aunts and uncles looking on through their Bartrand eyelids! Do you remember our Bon Espoir? He was an omen of better temper, perhaps, than has prevailed between us since. Were you taken aback? Was I quite unlike what you expected?’ She asked these momentous questions with the keen curiosity characteristic of the passion in its earlier days. But all the time she shrank from encountering Geff Arbuthnot’s glance. ‘You really desire to know?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I will tell you, on one condition. What was your wish when you curtsied under the cedars to the new moon?’ ‘My wish?’ turning farther and farther away from him. ‘Why, folly unrepeatable--the sort of nonsense my nurses taught me to say when I was little. Your memory is inconveniently good.’