Mr. Cardew looked at her steadfastly, scrutinisingly, but her eyes were on the thunderclouds, and the lily fell faster and faster. The face of this girl had hovered before him for weeks, day and night. He never for a moment proposed to himself deliberate love for her--he could not do it, and yet he had come there, not, perhaps, consciously in order to find her, but dreaming of her all the time. He was literally possessed. The more he thought about her, the less did he see and hear of the world outside him, and no motive for action found access to him which was not derived from her. Of course it was all utterly mad and unreasonable, for, after all, what did he really know about her, and what was there in her to lay hold of him with such strength? But, alas! thus it was, thus he was made; so much the worse for him. Was this a Christian believer? was he really sincere in his belief? He was sincere with a sincerity, to speak arithmetically, of the tenth power beyond that of his exemplary churchwarden Johnson, whose religion would have restrained him from anything warmer than the extension of a Sunday black-gloved finger-tip to any woman save "Mrs. J." Here he was by the riverside with her; he was close to her; nobody was present, but he could not stir nor speak! Catharine felt his gaze, although her eyes were not towards him. At last the lily came to an end and she tossed the naked stalk after the flower. She loved this man; it was a perilous moment: one touch, a hair's breadth of oscillation, and the two would have been one. At such a crisis the least external disturbance is often decisive. The first note of the thunder was heard, and suddenly the image of Mrs. Cardew presented itself before Catharine's eyes, appealing to her piteously, tragically. She faced Mr. Cardew. "I am sorry Mrs. Cardew is not here. I wish I had seen more of her. Oh, Mr. Cardew! how I envy her! how I wish I had her brains for scientific subjects! She is wonderful. But I _must_ be going; the thunder is distant; you will be in Eastthorpe, I hope, before the storm comes. Good- bye," and she had gone.