"Are they? by Jove," was all that young Awdas replied. "That's interesting." But for him, too, what he said was as a man talks in his sleep; what he saw about him was less clear than the landscape of a dream. In his heart the boy was awed and exultant. He had told her. It had leapt from his lips, rather. He was conscious of new power within him; something of the feeling that had been his on the morning when he had first gone up on a "solo." Now she knew what he had to say to her--for he _would_ say the rest of it presently. Not yet; not yet.... They pottered about the oyster-park, talking of oyster-culture. They had tea in the town, discussing the various tea-shops of their preference in London and Paris. Then he asked her if she were too tired to walk home and would like to take the little tramway; he knew he ought to ask her that, but he hoped inwardly that she would agree to walk. He breathed again when she protested that she was never tired. They took to the forest-path again, now gilded by the sun's rays, pointing through the pine-trunks; beyond the fringing branches the glimpse of sea and sky had changed from corn-cockle-blue to saffron-yellow. They walked, talking of those other fair woods of France that the War had turned into treeless, blasted wastes, spun over by webs of barbed wire. And then they came to that rise in the ground of the forest where the arbutus bushes seemed to fall back, and whence they had caught the first glimpse of the sea. It was here that he had spoken, on their way out. It was here that, on their way home, silence fell suddenly upon them. As if by tacit consent, they stopped walking. He turned to her. "No," said Mrs. Cartwright hastily, as if he had said something. "No, no." "Yes," said Jack Awdas, quietly and steadily, and just as if no time had elapsed between his first hurt "_Don't_" and this. "I am going to talk to you about it. I must." "No, no. Please don't," gently and unhappily, from her. "It's better not. There's nothing to be said." "Oh, isn't there, by Jove!" exclaimed the boy. "There is everything. I must tell you. I----Well, you know now, of course. I do care for you, most tremendously." Tall woman as she was, he was looking down into her face as he went on quickly, composedly. The intensity of what he felt took from him all shyness. He said: "I never thought it was in me to care so awfully about anybody. It's all come"--he sketched a gesture with his long arm--"like that! In me! I can't tell you what it's like. When I've heard other fellows talking, I've thought----But I see now it's absolutely true. Only more so. None of them cared as I do. They couldn't. They hadn't met--you."