He put his earthy, hard hand to his mouth and shouted. Pamela saw the man hurrying from the greenhouse, where he was getting young tomato plants ready for planting out. She followed Nancy and Edred, dreading to leave them alone for a moment, despising herself for dreading. They had just passed through the holly hedge. She scurried after, not knowing why she put her feet so softly on the gravel and coaxed her skirt close to her limbs so that it should not brush the box edging. When she stood in the frame of the arch she stopped. Her clear, jealous eyes went straight across the garden, across the bed of newly-planted cauliflowers which Chalcraft had been allowed to dibble in for the last time--next year she would have a lawn and carriage-drive. She looked across the brick path, through the tall heads of June flowers, to the umbrella yew-tree beneath which Gainah’s lilies were blooming. They were standing behind it, between the thick foliage and the square lattice of the dining-parlor window. She saw Edred peer through to see if the room was empty. She saw Nancy, her head down, her arms and hands jerking, pretending to admire the lilies--bemoaning, in her imbecile way, no doubt, because Evergreen would not let her have lilies too. They were very close together in the bosky kindness of the yew; no doubt it had been a witness to many like scenes and been discreet. Nancy seemed to sway a bit nearer the lithe figure in gray. Pamela saw his face and her heart came to a startled stop. He had looked like that when he kissed her for the first time--on the stairs of the boarding-house. It had been the first man’s kiss of her life. Nancy’s eyes and cheeks and lips blazed like her ruddy hair. He pulled her toward him with the easy, insolent air of a man who is sure of his woman--who has been sure of women all his life--and kissed her on lids, lips, brows. Pamela, wearing a white cotton gown, her head bare, looked like statue--one of the statues that used to decorate old gardens. She forgot everything--her approaching marriage and magnificence, her border of tea roses, the carriage-drive, her wedding clothes--all the big and little things which equally made her happiness or misery. For the first time for many months she seemed to touch her past self. She had almost forgotten, in the new strong life, the old one of dull days, and sloppy streets, and shop-windows, and a struggle for the latest fashion at the least possible cost. She was again that sharp-witted girl in Bloomsbury, that wildly wretched one who used to take omnibus in spare hours just to stand on the common and stare hungrily at a wall.