But in the Ridgeway all was strong light and deep shadow. The asphalt roadway gleamed dazzlingly white under the sun, and the sidewalks, overhung with heavy lime-trees, were avenues of green twilight. Along them men’s sunburnt faces seemed strangely brown and handsome, and the sweat that disfigured the noses and foreheads of girls no longer glistened. Even a hawker bearing with an easy hand a monstrous cloud of multicoloured balloons for sale on the High Road seemed rather to lend a grotesque charm than a positive disfigurement. And the houses, well set back from the road, displayed their gilded domes and sham minarets and pseudo-Elizabethan gables with quiet, unostentatious pride. Nicknamed “The Lovers’ Parade,” the Ridgeway was justifying the title. But in the soft gloom there was only enchantment in the passing of couples: their facial blemishes were toned down, their gestures took on a strange and subtle grace, their wandering was shadowlike amongst the shadows. Only when they stepped off the kerb into the garish sunlight was the spell shattered, the dream brought to an awakening. Catherine passed airily along. Just as she had not been conscious of the brutal garishness of the High Road, so now the soft charm of the Ridgeway did not affect her. Her heart was abundantly glad and joyous, but her senses were quiescent. Had she been in her usual mood of lonely introspection she would have thrilled at the beauty of all around her--faces would have attracted and repelled her with fierce intensity, she would have laughed at the cloud of colour towed by the balloon man, she would have drunk in the cloying scent of geraniums like nectar. As it was, she was vaguely but tremendously rapturous. And the rapture came from within her, not from without. § 6 She found him in the garden seated in a deck-chair (adjusted to the bottom notch) reading the _Observer_. He wore grey flannel trousers and a sort of Donegal tweed sporting jacket. He was utterly divorced from the prevailing atmosphere of Upton Rising in that his attire betrayed no indication of the fact that it was Sunday. Catherine thought: “How delightfully Bohemian!” and (an after-thought), “He certainly hasn’t dressed up for me, anyway.” “Hullo!” he cried, as she obtruded herself into the alcove of shrubbery which ringed him round almost completely. And he rose (a matter of obvious difficulty) and shook hands with her. He dropped the _Observer_ on the lawn. Also he smiled at her: it was not a beautiful smile, because he could not smile beautifully, but it was a smile of welcome. “Come along, and well find another chair,” he said. They strolled over the lawn and towards the house. “I’m taking a day off,” he said briskly, “and I think I deserve it. The first day off I’ve had for months.” “Except last Monday,” she put in. “Why--what happened then?” “You were at High Beech. I saw you.”