Pat stretched out a hand and the branches brushed her fingers. "I wouldn't do it even now," she said. "I know perfectly well a skinny arm covered with black hair would come out of the yews and grab me. There's something that looks like a skinny arm hovering at the back of your neck now, Johnnie. What made you such a hero that particular day?" "You had betted me I wouldn't, if you remember." "I don't remember. Did I?" "Well, you egged me on with taunts." "And you went and did it? What a good influence I've been in your life, haven't I? Oh, dear! It's funny to think of you and me as kids on this very bit of water and here we are again now, old and worn and quite different people, and the water's just the same as ever." "I'm not different." "Yes, you are." "What makes you say I'm different?" "Oh, I don't know." John stopped paddling. He wanted to get to the bottom of this. "Why do you say I'm different?" "Those white things through the trees there must be geese." John was not interested in geese. "I'm not different at all," he said, "I...." He broke off. He had been on the verge of saying that he had loved her then and that he loved her still--which, he perceived, would have spoiled everything. "I'm just the same," he concluded lamely. "Then why don't you sport with me on the green as you did when you were a growing lad? Here you have been back for days, and to-night is the first glimpse I get of you. And, even so, I had to walk a mile and fling gravel at your window. In the old days you used to live on my doorstep. Do you think I've enjoyed being left all alone all this time?" John was appalled. Put this way, the facts did seem to point to a callous negligence on his part. And all the while he had been supposing his conduct due to delicacy and a sense of what was fitting and would be appreciated. In John's code, it was the duty of a man who has told a girl he loved her and been informed that she does not love him to efface himself, to crawl into the background, to pass out of her life till the memory of his crude audacity shall have been blotted out by time. Why, half the big game shot in Africa owed their untimely end, he understood, to this tradition. "I didn't know...." "What?" "I didn't know you wanted to see me." "Of course I wanted to see you. Look here, Johnnie. I'll tell you what. Are you doing anything to-morrow?" "No." "Then get out that old rattletrap of yours and gather me up at my place, and we'll go off and have a regular picnic like we used to do in the old days. Father is lunching out. You could come at about one o'clock. We could get out to Wenlock Edge in an hour. It would be lovely there if this weather holds up. What do you say?" John did not immediately say anything. His feelings were too deep for words. He urged the boat forward, and the Skirme received it with that slow, grave, sleepy courtesy which made it for right-thinking people the best of all rivers. "Pat!" said John at length, devoutly.