Di had watched the sunset alone. John had not seen it. His eyes were fixed on her calm face with the western glow upon it. She did not even notice that he was looking at her. One of her ungloved hands lay on her knee, so near to him yet so immeasurably far away. Could he stretch across the gulf to touch it? His expressionless face took some meaning at last. He leaned a little towards her, and laid his hand on hers. She started violently, and dropped her sunset thoughts like a surprised child its flowers. Even a less vain man than John might have been cut to the quick by the sudden horrified bewilderment of her face, and of the dazzled light-blinded eyes which turned to peer at him with such unseeing distress. "Oh, John!" she said, "not you;" and she put her other hand quickly for one second on his. "Yes," he said, "that is just it." Her mouth quivered painfully. "I thought," she said, "we were--surely we _are_ friends." "No," said John, mastering the insane emotion which had leapt within him at the touch of her hand. "We never were, and we never shall be. I will have nothing to do with any friendship of yours. I'm not a beggar to be shaken off with coppers. I want everything or nothing." Her manner changed. Her self-possession came back. "I am sorry it must be nothing," she said gently, and she tried quietly but firmly to withdraw her hand. His grasp on it tightened ever so little, but in an unmistakable manner, and she instantly gave up the attempt. A splendid colour mounted slowly to her face. She drew herself up. Her lightning-bright intrepid eyes met his without flinching. They looked hard at each other in the waning light. Once again they seemed to measure swords as at the moment when they first met. Each felt the other formidable. There was no slightest shred of disguise between them. There was a breathless silence. Di went through a frightful revulsion of mind. The sunset and the light along the sky seemed to have betrayed her. These pleasant days had been in league against her. And now, goaded by the grasp of his hand on hers, her mind made one headlong rush at the goal towards which these accomplices had been luring her. Where were they leading her? Glamour dropped dead. Marriage remained. To become this man's wife; to merge her life in his; to give up everything into the hand that still held hers, the pressure of which was like a claim! He had only laid his hand upon her hand, but it seemed to her that he had laid it upon her soul. Her whole being rose up against him in sudden passionate antagonism horrible to bear. And all the time she knew instinctively that he was stronger than she. John saw and understood that mental struggle almost with compassion, yet with an exultant sense of power over her. One conviction of the soul ever remains unshaken, that whom we understand is ours to have and to hold. He deliberately released her hand. She did not make the slightest movement at regaining possession of it.