‘Thanks, I can carry it very well. I shall turn this way.’ ‘No, no. My way this afternoon.’ Nancy stood still, looking up the street that led towards the sea. She was still bright-coloured; her lips had a pathetic expression, a child-like pouting. ‘There was an understanding,’ said Tarrant, with playful firmness. ‘Not for to-day.’ ‘No. For the day when you disappointed me. The day after, I didn’t think it worth while to come here; yesterday I came, but felt no surprise that I didn’t meet you. To-day I had a sort of hope. This way.’ She followed, and they walked for several minutes in silence. ‘Will you let me look at Helmholtz?’ said the young man at length. ‘Most excellent book, of course. “Physiological Causes of Harmony in Music,” “Interaction of Natural Forces,” “Conservation of Force.”--You enjoy this kind of thing?’ ‘One must know something about it.’ ‘I suppose so. I used to grind at science because everybody talked science. In reality I loathed it, and now I read only what I like. Life’s too short for intellectual make-believe. It is too short for anything but enjoyment. Tell me what you read for pure pleasure. Poetry?’ They had left the streets, and were pursuing a road bordered with gardens, gardens of glowing colour, sheltered amid great laurels, shadowed by stately trees; the air was laden with warm scents of flower and leaf. On an instinct of resistance, Nancy pretended that the exact sciences were her favourite study. She said it in the tone of superiority which habit had made natural to her in speaking of intellectual things. And Tarrant appeared to accept her declaration without scepticism; but, a moment after, he turned the talk upon novels. Thus, for half an hour and more, they strolled on by upward ways, until Teignmouth lay beneath them, and the stillness of meadows all about. Presently Tarrant led from the beaten road into a lane all but overgrown with grass. He began to gather flowers, and offered them to Nancy. Personal conversation seemed at an end; they were enjoying the brilliant sky and the peaceful loveliness of earth. They exchanged simple, natural thoughts, or idle words in which was no thought at all. Before long, they came to an old broken gate, half open; it was the entrance to a narrow cartway, now unused, which descended windingly between high thick hedges. Ruts of a foot in depth, baked hard by summer, showed how miry the track must be in the season of rain. ‘This is our way,’ said Tarrant, his hand on the lichened wood. ‘Better than the pier or the promenade, don’t you think?’ ‘But we have gone far enough.’ Nancy drew back into the lane, looked at her flowers, and then shaded her eyes with them to gaze upward. ‘Almost. Another five minutes, and you will see the place I told you of. You can’t imagine how beautiful it is.’ ‘Another day--’ ‘We are all but there--’