He remembered it. As he sat by her side and could feel the warm life in her, it became terribly actual to him, the cool contact of her lips, and he was glad when the bus reached the yard with the painted swing-boats and he need no longer sit by her side. He had begun to feel subservient to her, and he would not have that. What Rosa was to Issy, what Golda was to his father, that should a woman be to him, for it was good and decent so. . . . He was almost sorry he had come. He was painfully shy, and knew that she was suffering under it. He walked so fast that she was hard put to keep up with him, but she swung out and would not be beaten, and managed his pace without losing her breath. Over to the wooded side of the Heath he took her, and stopped under a chestnut-tree. "Shall we sit down?" he said. "Or would you like to go on walking?" "I'd like to sit down," she answered. "I love walking, but I can't talk at the same time." He sat down at once, without waiting for her to choose a spot. "This grass is nice and cool," he said. It was wet, but he had no thought for her thin cotton frock. She sat a couple of yards away from him on the short turf and plunged her arm into the long, cool grass. Then she lay on her stomach and plucked a blade of grass and chewed it. "Thank you for sending me the roses. I gave them to my mother." "I liked your mother." "She liked you. She said: 'That is a good girl.' She is very quick at guessing what people are like." "I'm glad she liked me." Once again conversation died away, but she seemed content to lie there with her arms in the cool grass. Their round slenderness fascinated him. Her short hair hung over her face, so that he could only see the tip of her chin. Suddenly he asked her:-- "Do you send flowers to Mitchell?" "Yes," she said, and her head was lowered so that the tip of her chin was hidden by her hair. He said nothing, but he too lay on the grass, flat on his stomach, with his head on his arms. His heart began to thump, and, though he tried to control it, it would not be still. Without raising his head he said, in a choking voice that astonished him:-- "My father fainted for love of my mother. When he heard her name he fainted away." She said nothing, only in the long grass her fingers were still. Her white hands in the grass fascinated him, held his eyes transfixed, the green blades coming up through the white fingers that were so still. He stared at them as though they were some strange flower, and for him they had nothing to do with her at all. He drew himself near to them, never taking his eyes off them--white and green, white and green and pink at the finger-tips. He must touch them. They were cool, soft, and firm, soft as the petals of a rose.