"Firstly," said James through his eyeglass, "because Urquhart asks you to go in his--a terror that destroyeth in the noonday compared to ours; and secondly because, if you don't want it, I should rather like to go to Brighton in mine." "Oh," said she, "then you don't mind motoring in March!" "Not in a closed car," said James--"and not to Brighton." This acted as an extinguisher of the warmer feelings. Let Mr. Urquhart do his worst then. CHAPTER IX SUNDRY ROMANTIC EPISODES A little cloud of witness, assembled at will like seagulls out of the blue inane, would come about her in after years. That madly exhilarating rush to Westgate, for instance, on a keen March morning; and that sudden question of hers to Urquhart, "What made you think of asking me?" And his laconic answer, given without a turn of the head, "Because I knew you would like it. You did before, you know. And that was January." There was one. Another, connected with it, was her going alone up to the schoolhouse, and her flush of pleasure when Lancelot said, "Oh, I say, did He bring you down? Good--then we'll go immediately and see the car; perhaps it's a new one." She could afford to recall that--after a long interval. They had had a roaring day, "all over the place," as Lancelot said afterwards to a friend; and then there had been her parting with Urquhart in the dark at the open door of Queendon Court. "Aren't you going to stop?" "No, my dear." She remembered being amused with that. "Aren't you even coming in?" "I am not. Good-bye. You enjoyed yourself?" "Oh, immensely." "That's what I like," he had said, and "pushed off," as his own phrase went. Atop of that, the return to James, and to nothingness. For nothing happened, except that he had been in a good temper throughout, which may easily have been because she had been in one herself--until the Easter holidays, when he had been very cross indeed. Poor James, to get him to begin to understand Lancelot's bluntness, intensity, and passion for something or other, did seem hopeless. They were at Wycross, on her urgent entreaty, and James was bored at Wycross, she sometimes thought, because she loved it so much. Jealousy. A man's wife ought to devote herself. She should love nothing but her husband. He had spent his days at the golf course, not coming home to lunch. Urquhart was asked for a Sunday--on Lancelot's account--but couldn't come, or said so at least. Then, on the Saturday, when he should have been there, James suddenly kissed her in the garden--and, of course, in the dark.