"Did I faint?" she asked with interest. "I never fainted before. But--oh--yes--I remember. It was rather horrible. The quarry tumbled down almost on me, and I just stopped short--in time--and I came round by this road because the other's stopped up, and I was so glad when I saw the house. Thank you so much; it must have been an awful bother. I think I had better start soon----" "No, you don't; you're not fit to ride alone yet," said he to himself. Aloud he said: "You said something about a puncture--when you are better I'll mend it. And, look here--have you had any lunch?" "No," said she. "Then--if you'll allow me." He left the room, and presently returned with the tray set for his own lunch; then he fetched from the larder everything he could lay hands on: half a cold chicken, some cold meat pudding, a pot of jam, bottled beer. He set these confusedly on the table. "Now," he said, "come and try to eat." "It's very good of you to bother," she said, a little surprise in her tone, for she had expected "lunch" to be a set formal meal at which some discreet female relative would preside. "But aren't you--don't you--do you live alone, then?" "Yes, a woman comes in in the mornings. I'm sorry she's gone: she could have arranged a better lunch for you." "Better? why, it's lovely!" said she, accepting the situation with frank amusement, and she gave a touch or two to the table to set everything in its place. Then they lunched together. He would have served her standing, as one serves a queen--but she laughed again, and he took the place opposite her. During lunch they talked. After lunch they mended the punctured tyre, and talked all the while; then it was past three o'clock. "You won't go yet," he said then, daring greatly for what seemed to him a great stake. "Let me make you some tea--I can, I assure you--and let us see if the tyre holds up----" "Oh, the tyre is all right, thanks to your cleverness----" "Well, then," said he desperately, "take pity on a poor hermit! I give you my word, I have been here ten months and three days, and I have not in that time spoken a single word to any human being except my bedmaker." "But if you want to talk to people why did you begin being a hermit?" "I thought I didn't, then." "Well--now you know better, why don't you come back and talk to people in the ordinary way?" This was the first and last sign she gave that the circumstances in which she found herself with him were anything but ordinary. "I have a book to finish," said he. "Would you like to have tea in the wilderness or in here?" He wisely took her consent for granted this time, and his wisdom was justified. They had tea in the garden. The wilderness blossomed like a rose, to Maurice's thinking. In his mind he was saying over and over again: "How bored I must have been all this time! How bored I must have been!"