There was sadness in everything,--in the room, in the ringing bird-calls from the garden, in the lit, golden lawn beyond the window, with its single miraculous cherry-tree breaking in immaculate blossom and tossing long foamy sprays against the sky. She was sad to the verge of tears, and yet the sorrow was rich,--a suffocating joy. The evening held Roddy clasped within its beauty and mystery: he was identified with its secret. ‘Oh, Roddy, I love you! I’ve always loved you.’ Oh, the torment of loving! But soon the way would open without check and lead to the happy ending. Surely it had started to open already. The pictures came before her. Roddy playing tennis,--playing a characteristic twisty game that irritated his opponents, and made him laugh to himself as he ran and leapt. His eyes forgot to guard themselves and be secret: they were clear yellow-brown jewels. She was his partner, and with solemn fervour she had tried to play as she had never played before, for his sake, to win his admiration. But he was not the sort of partner who said: “Well played!” or “Hard lines.” He watched her strokes and looked amused, but was silent even when she earned him victory after victory. Afterwards she said: ‘Oh, Roddy, I love tennis. Don’t you?’ He answered indifferently: ‘Sometimes,--when they let me do as I like; when I’m not expected to play what they call properly. One of my lady opponents once told me I played a most unsporting game. “My intelligence, however corrupt, is worth all your muscle”--was what I did not just then think of saying to her. She was in a temper, that lady.’ She smiled at him, thinking how she loved the feel of her own body moving obediently, the satisfaction of achieving a perfect stroke, the look of young bodies in play and in repose,--especially his; and she hazarded: ‘I love it just for the movement. I love movement,--the look of people in motion and the thought and feel of my own movements. I suppose I am too solemn over it. I want so much to do it as well as I can. I’m solemn because I’m excited. I sometimes think I would like above all things to be the best dancer in the world,--or the best acrobat; or failing that, to watch dancers and acrobats for ever.’ Looking back on their few but significant conversations, she decided that there was something about him which invited confidences while seeming to repel them. Though his response--if it came at all or came save in silent laughter--was uncoloured by enthusiasm and unsweetened by sympathy, he made her feel that he understood and even pondered in secret over her remarks. ‘There are some things I tell you, Roddy, that I tell no one else. They make themselves be told. Often I haven’t known they were inside me.’ She rehearsed this silently. One day she would say it aloud to him. Then she had added: ‘Do you still caricature, Roddy?’ ‘Now and then,--when I feel like it.’