He drew one of the easy chairs forward to the window. "Sit down in the sun; Marks will bring the tea in a moment." She sat back in the chair and looked out on to the shining roofs and towers, not glancing towards him, but acutely aware of him, of all his movements. He sat down upon the broad window-seat near her and looked at her. She knew that she had never been conscious, physically, of anyone before. Roddy's clumsy hands and rather awkward body had always simply belonged to Roddy and stayed at that; now she felt as if Francis Breton's hand, close, as she knew, to hers, was joined to her by a running current of attraction. Although he was not touching her, it was as though she were chained to him. If he moved she felt that she must move with him and every motion that he made seemed to rouse some response in her. She was aware, of course, as she was always aware with him, of the way that intimacy between them had moved since their last meeting. All her romantic evocation of life as she wanted it to be helped her to this. It was as though she said to herself, "Here at least is my true self free and dominant. I must make the most of it"--and yet, with that, something seemed to warn her that freedom too easily obtained carried at its heart disappointment. The ugly man-servant brought in tea and then disappeared. Breton moved about, waited upon her, then sat down closer to her, leaning forward and looking into her eyes. It was part of his temperament that he should take her coming to him as an instant acknowledgment of the complete fulfilment of his wishes. He always saw life as the very rosiest of his dreams until it woke him to reality. He was ruled completely by the mood of the moment, and his one emotion now was that Rachel was divinely intended for him alone of all human beings-- But he could not wait.... He knew, by this time, that reflection was always a period of disappointment. He was unhappily made in that he yielded to his impulses of regret as eagerly as to his impulses of anticipation--One mood followed so swiftly upon another that collision might seem inevitable. They were, both of them, young enough to see life as something that would inevitably, in a short time, condemn them both to years of sterile monotony. Rachel indeed felt that she was already caught.... They must, both of them, therefore, make the best of their time. "I _was_ so afraid," he repeated again, "lest something should have stopped you." "I would have asked you to come to us, only I'm afraid that my husband still----" "Oh! I quite understand." "It's natural--Roddy's like that. If he wants to do a thing he doesn't care for anybody and just does it. But if nothing makes him especially want to do it, then he just takes other people's opinions. Now he might ask you suddenly to come and see us--simply because he took it into his head. Then nobody could stop him.... He's very obstinate."