Marjorie’s heart leaped with novel tenderness at the contact of his lips. She suffered him to hold her in his arms. She watched him with shy pride, with a child’s delight in the new sense of ownership, as he walked away, along the accustomed path, from Tintajeux. Then, later, when she found herself in her own little white-draped realm, when, later still, she had slept and awakened and dressed herself for a fresh day, the current of feeling swerved. She shivered at realising how absolutely her life had become entangled with his. She was assailed by reminiscences, all uncomfortable ones, of Major Tredennis. She was sensible of a longing, that had almost passion in it, for the liberty she had been betrayed into relinquishing. ‘I mean, if you will give me breathing space, to love you now.’ Here, surely, was what she needed--time for becoming used to the new phenomenon of a lover. During the past fortnight, Geoffrey had filled every thought of her waking hours; a haunting sense of his nearness had touched her dreams. At this point she had fain stood still--six months--a year--tacitly engaged, if need be, but on the same fraternal footing as when they walked together yesterday among the Langrune cornfields. Why hurry into commonplace? The Bartrands were not a kissing race. Geff ought to have divined their likes and dislikes, thought the poor child petulantly. And yet, pleaded another voice in this conscience of seventeen, the kiss was sweet! It seemed that she had become, suddenly and distinctly, two persons--one a girl weakly contented, as our grandmothers used to be, at the prospect of husband and home and fireside; the other, a strong-headed, Minerva-like young woman coolly criticising the question of love and marriage from a vantage ground, and liking it ill. Which of the two,--she asked herself this pretty often throughout the sunny tedium of the long day,--which was the real, which the artificial Marjorie Bartrand? It had been settled between them that Geoffrey should walk out to Tintajeux before the Seigneur’s supper-hour that evening. When the time came, when Geff approached the Manoir, treading lightly, as befits a man whose heart wells over with hope, he found the friendly schoolroom window bolted. No youthful flitting figure was to be seen among the growing shadows of the garden; Arcadia was empty. Andros Bartrand, leisurely pacing, a cigar between his lips, his terriers at his heels, possessed the lawn.