“There is a lovely bay a little farther on,” Johnson said as they crept up the steady slope towards Mont Sohier. “I saw it from a boat the other day, and have meant ever since to go there by road. It is called St. Brelade’s Bay, and the cliffs behind it are for the most part beautifully wooded. I suggest we should stop there a little while; I will leave the car at the hotel. Would you like to do that?” They were almost the first words he had spoken since they had set out, and for some moments his companion did not answer. Then she said, and her voice had a curious timbre, as though she were holding herself in check: “I will do whatever you like; the surroundings here are so exquisite that no matter where we go it will be pleasant. Look at that purple haze hanging like a gauze curtain over the cliffs all round the coast and right along the shore,” and she pointed. “Did you ever see anything so perfect? And the endless expanse of white sand with the sun’s rays sparkling on it as far as eye can reach, and hardly a soul in sight. I had no idea Jersey was so lovely; had you, Doctor Johnson?” He murmured some almost inaudible reply, and, turning the corner sharply, slowly drew up at the entrance to a garage flanked on both sides with great bushes of hydrangeas. “We will leave the car here,” he said, “and after tea we can explore some of those woods on the sloping cliffs. Probably from up there the view is even finer.” The hotel, though the holiday season was at its height, they found almost deserted. The hordes of trippers whose presence each had often suffered from during August and September by the sea on the coasts of England, were conspicuous by their absence. The few visitors wandering on the beach were of quite a different type. They were what can most accurately be described as people of refinement. During tea Johnson and his companion hardly spoke. Some strange barrier seemed suddenly to have risen up between them. Almost in silence they afterwards strolled along the terrace, and a little later turned their steps up a narrow, grass-grown lane which appeared to lead in the direction of the sloping woods they sought. The lane curved, then turned abruptly to the right. Presently it curved again, describing almost a segment of a circle, then gradually became narrower. The grass, too, was longer as they wandered on. Then the branches of the trees on either side began to meet overhead, and soon they found themselves walking through a tunnel of thick foliage. And still neither spoke. They walked very slowly now. It was Johnson who at last broke the silence: “Jersey will always be associated in my mind,” he said in a low voice, “with some of the happiest moments of my life--this wonderful afternoon in particular.” “Why wonderful?” Cora asked almost in a whisper, not trusting herself to look into his face. “Why wonderful?” Almost unconsciously his arm stole about her, and he drew her, unresisting, closer to him.