From his Puritanical bringing up, the theory of self-surrender and deprivation ever kept before him, Denzil had assuredly learnt to possess his soul in patience; and throughout all that smiling month of May, while he whipped the capricious streams that wound about the valley, with Angela for the willing companion of his saunterings from pool to pool, he never once alarmed her by any hint of a warmer feeling than friendship; indeed, he thought of himself sometimes as one who lived in an enchanted world, where to utter a certain fatal word would be to break the spell; and whatever momentary impulse or passionate longing, engendered by a look, a smile, the light touch of a hand, the mere sense of proximity, might move him to speak of his love, he had sufficient self-command to keep the fatal words unspoken. He meant to wait till the last hour of his visit. Only when separation was imminent would he plead his cause again. Thus at the worst he would have lost no happy hours of her company. And, in the mean time, since she was always kind, and seemed to grow daily more familiar and at ease in his society, he dared hope that affection for him and forgetfulness of that other were growing side by side in her mind. In this companionship Angela learnt many of the secrets and subtleties of the angler’s craft, as acquired by her teacher’s personal experience, or expounded in that delightful book, then less than twenty years old, which has ever been the angler’s gospel. Often after following the meandering water till a gentle weariness invited them to rest, Angela and Denzil seated themselves on a sheltered bank and read their Izaak Walton together, both out of the same volume, he pleased to point out his favourite passages and to watch her smile as she read.