A silence then! She had right over her head a rug that her aunt had lent her; a silhouette beside him, with a cocky nose turned up straight out of the descending black mass. But for the square toque she would have had the silhouette of a Manchester cotton-hand: the toque gave it a different line; like the fillet of Diana. It was piquant and agreeable to ride beside a quite silent lady in the darkness of the thick Weald that let next to no moonlight through. The horse's hoofs went clock, clock: a good horse. The near lamp illuminated the russet figure of a man with a sack on his back, pressed into the hedge, a blinking lurcher beside him. "Keeper between the blankets!" Tietjens said to himself: "All these south country keepers sleep all night. . . . And then you give them a five quid tip for the week-end shoot. . . ." He determined that, as to that, too he would put his foot down. No more week-ends with Sylvia in the mansions of the Chosen People. . . . The girl said suddenly; they had run into a clearing of the deep underwoods: "I'm not stuffy with you over that Latin, though you were unnecessarily rude. And I'm not sleepy. I'm loving it all." He hesitated for a minute. It was a silly-girl thing to say. She didn't usually say silly-girl things. He ought to snub her for her own sake. . . . He had said: "I'm rather loving it too!" She was looking at him; her nose had disappeared from the silhouette. He hadn't been able to help it; the moon had been just above her head; unknown stars all round her; the night was warm. Besides, a really manly man may condescend at times! He rather owes it to himself. . . . She said: "That was nice of you! You might have hinted that the rotten drive was taking you away from your so important work. . . ." "Oh, I can think as I drive," he said. She said: "Oh!" and then: "The reason why I'm unconcerned over your rudeness about my Latin is that I know I'm a much better Latinist than you. You can't quote a few lines of Ovid without sprinkling howlers in. . . . It's _vastum_, not _longum_ . . . 'Terra tribus scopulis vastum procurrit' . . . It's _alto_, not _caelo_ . . . 'Uvidus ex alto desilientis. . . .' How could Ovid have written _ex caelo_? The 'c' after the 'x' sets your teeth on edge." Tietjens said: "_Excogitabo_!" "That's purely canine!" she said with contempt. "Besides," Tietjens said, "_longum_ is much better than _vastum_. I hate cant adjectives like 'vast.' . . ." "It's like your modesty to correct Ovid," she exclaimed. "Yet you say Ovid and Catullus were the only two Roman poets to _be_ poets. That's because they _were_ sentimental and used adjectives like _vastum_. . . . What's 'Sad tears mixed with kisses' but the sheerest sentimentality!" "It ought, you know," Tietjens said with soft dangerousness, "to be 'Kisses mingled with sad tears' . . . 'Tristibus et lacrimis oscula mixta dabis. . . .'"