A thought struck him. Perhaps Laura, perhaps Tanqueray, had divined him and were endeavouring in kindness to take from him the poison of a preposterous hope. He preferred, however, not to explain them or the situation or himself thus. He was, with all possible sublimity, renouncing Jane. Another thought struck him. It struck him hard, with the shock almost of blasphemy. It broke into speech. "Not," he said, "if she were to marry Him?" Laura was silent, and he wondered. Why not? After all it was natural. She matched him. The thing was inevitable, and it was fitting. So supremely fitting was it that he could not very well complain. He could give her up to George Tanqueray. X Jane Holland and Tanqueray had left the others some considerable way behind. It was possible, they agreed, to have too much of Nicky, though he did adore them. The wide high road stood up before them, climbing the ridge, to drop down into Wendover. A white road, between grass borders and hedgerows, their green powdered white with the dust of it. Over all, the pallor of the first white hour of twilight. For a moment, a blessed pause in the traffic, they were alone; twilight and the road were theirs. The two bore themselves with a certain physical audacity, a swinging challenge to fatigue. He, in his well-knit youth, walked with the step of some fine, untamed animal. She, at his side, kept the wild pace he set with a smooth motion of her own. She carried, high and processionally, her trophy, flowers from their host's garden, wild parsley of her own gathering, and green fans of beech and oak. As she went, the branches swayed with the swinging of her body. A light wind woke on the hill and played with her. Her long veil, grey-blue and transparent, falling from her head to her shoulders, flew and drifted about her, now clinging to her neck, her breasts, now fluttering itself free. He looked at her, and thought that if Gisborne, R.A., hadn't been an idiot, he would have painted her, not sitting, but like that. Protected by the charm of Rose, there was no more terror for him in any charm of Jane's. He could afford to show his approval, to admit that, even as a woman, she had points. He could afford, being extremely happy himself, to make Jane happy too. So sheltered, so protected was he that it did not strike him that Jane was utterly defenceless and exposed. "Yes," he said, "it's been a day." "Hasn't it?" She saw him sustained by some inward ecstasy. The coming joy, the joy of his wedding-day, was upon him; the light of it was in his eyes as he looked at her, the tenderness of it in his voice as he spoke to her again. "Have you liked it as much as you used to like our other days?" "Oh more, far more." Then, remembering how those other days had been indeed theirs and nobody else's, she added, "In spite of poor Nicky."