"No, thank you. I think Bennett might, as he's the youngest." Annette had been feeling very sorry for Bennett. He seemed so solitary, so much out of his element, so unable to cope with grown men like Serge and Basil and the lordly Londoner, Fry. He accepted her invitation with obvious relief, took her burden, and carried it down to the water's edge, under a willow trailing its leaves in the water. Herbert Fry offered his escort to Mary, and she acquiesced, bridling. Serge was left alone. He lay on his back and gazed up at the sky--blue, serene, cheering, and comforting. His body relaxed, and he gave himself up to the sweetness of the day's mood, not without a final drowsy reflection: "If such a moment of contentment as this is the highest good, and, since it can be procured at the cost of a little physical labour rewarded by a solid meal, what's the good of all the rest? The answer to that is that one cannot live alone. What a day for love-making!" He laughed. "Everything leads back to that." He thought of Herbert Fry fobbed off with Mary, and he chuckled. Then he thought of Bennett Lawrie and Annette together by the water. He raised himself up. He could not see them, but he could hear their voices. "What a day!" he said again, and added "for love-making." * * * Down by the river Annette and Bennett were at first very shy of each other. In silence she handed him the plates, and he dipped them in the water and handed them back to her and she dried them; then the forks, and when they came to the knives, Bennett thought: "Why can't I say something?" And Annette thought: "Why can't I say something?" She looked out along the shining river, slow-moving under its green banks; never a house, never a boat in sight, and Bennett was bending down entirely engrossed in his occupation. It was his air of complete absorption in everything he did and said (though he never did and never said anything remarkable) that interested her and made her want to know more of him. At last, when they had finished, very timidly she asked him: "Are you going to be a clergyman?" "I'm afraid not." "Oh! I'm sorry!" She remembered very vividly his earnestness in her father's study. "It costs too much money, you know. And my mother doesn't believe in me. It wouldn't be any good if she did, because there isn't any money." Annette could only say again: "I'm sorry." Instead of moving away, she sat down on the bank, and Bennett knelt quite near her. Seeking to explain away her desire to stay, she said: "It's so lovely here." "It's not so beautiful as Scotland." "Or Westmoreland." "Have you been to Scotland?" "I was at school in Edinburgh." "My father comes from Scotland." They exchanged the histories of their respective fathers. His was a mournful tale of a gradual descent into poverty, and he ended: "I suppose I shall be a clerk all my life, unless I run away and become an actor." "An actor?"