The old man, marching with uplifted head, and sometimes swinging the stick that he carried, was singing aloud in the gaiety of his heart, though Vincent, carefully keeping at a certain distance, could not make out either the words or the air. The young girl, on the other hand, was simply looking at the various objects, animate and inanimate, around her—at the birds picking up straws or shreds of wool for the building of their nests, at the wind shivering through the grey spikelets of the grass, at the ever-changing conformation of the clouds, at the swaying of the branches of the trees; while from time to time there came floating over from Knightsbridge the sound of a military band. No, she did not appear so sad as she had done the day before; and there was something cheerful, too, about her costume—about the simple dress of dark blue-and-white-striped linen and the sailor’s hat of cream-white with a dark blue band. Mary, he made sure her name was—Mary Bethune. Only a name to him; nothing more: a strange, indefinable, immeasurable distance lay between them; not for him was it to draw near to her, to breathe the same air with her, to listen to the low tones of her voice, to wait for the uplifting of the mysteriously shaded eyes. And as for fancies become more wildly audacious?—what would be the joy of any human being who should be allowed to touch—with trembling fingertips—with reverent and almost reluctant fingertips—the soft splendour of that shining and beautiful hair? George Bethune and his granddaughter made their way down to the Serpentine, and took their places on a bench there, while the old man proceeded to draw from his pocket a newspaper, which he leisurely began to read. The girl had nothing to do but sit placidly there and look around her—at the shimmering stretch of water, at the small boys sailing their mimic yachts, at the quacking ducks and yelping dogs, at the ever-rustling and murmuring trees. Vincent Harris had now dared to draw a little nearer; but still he felt that she was worlds and worlds away. How many yards were there between him and her?—not yards at all, but infinities of space! They were strangers to each other; no spoken word was possible between them; they might go through to the end of life with this impalpable barrier for ever dividing them. And yet it seemed a sort of miraculous thing that he was allowed to come so close—that he could almost tell the individual threads of that soft-shining hair. Then, more than once, too, he had caught a glimpse of her raised eyes, as she turned to address her grandfather; and that was a startling and bewildering experience. It was not their mere beauty; though, to be sure, their clear and limpid deeps seemed all the more clear and limpid because of the touch of sun-tan on her complexion; it was rather that they were full of all ineffable things—simplicity, submission, gratitude, affection, and even, as he rejoiced to think, some measure of mild enjoyment.