On the bare Normandy uplands, between tilled fields and driving clouds, I waited for her to waken. The air was growing chill; I drew my coat round her. I felt again, in a new and better way, that sense of nearness and forbiddenness which had exhilarated me to the point of delirium on the madcap journey down from Paris. I looked ahead into the pale distance, where the notched horizon bound the earth with a silver band... and I wondered where she was taking me, and what lay at the end. She might fight against it--she would fight against it; but the end should be marriage. I would watch over her always as I was watching now. She stirred; her eye-lids fluttered. She stared up at me for a moment with undisguised affection; then the fear of tenderness returned. She pulled herself together, rubbing her knuckles in her eyes and yawning. “Gee up, old hoss. This ain’t a bloomin’ cab-stand. You’re not home yet.” “You fell asleep, my dear, so I waited for you.” “Well, I shan’t pay you,” she laughed; “it’s not fair. Pray what did you think you were doing?” “Enjoying myself.” “There’s the difference; you like to crawl, I like to hurtle. You’re a tortoise; I’m a razzle-dazzle. We’re an ill-matched pair. Living in Pope Lane has made you pontifical. Oh, Dannie, in ten years your tummy’ll be bulgy and your head’ll be bald. Pope Lane’ll have done it. I know what I’ve always missed about you now.” “Something horrid? Let’s have it.” “A cowl. You ought to have been a monk in Florence, painting naked angels in impossible meadows.” “So kind of you. Religion mixed with impropriety! If there was someone to relieve me of my conscience, it wouldn’t be half bad. But I don’t live at Pope Lane any longer. You have the honor of sitting beside Sir Dante Cardover of Woadley Hall, Ransby, of which, you little wretch, you are soon to be mistress.” “That so? Sorry I spoke. Jump out and crank up the engine. It’s coming on again--you’re going to have the sentimentals, and you’re going to have ’em bad.” “I’ve known you sentimental, Fiesole.” Her lips trembled, and her body stiffened. “And you punished me for it.” “You have a woman’s memory.” “Odd, seeing I’m a woman. Who’s going to crank that engine? Am I, or are you?” We swung on through the bare bleak country with masked faces. She sat a little apart from me, her knees crossed and her hands clasped about them. Did I glance at her, she turned petulantly in the opposite direction. I cursed myself. I was almost angry with her. What was her plan? Had she given me the privileges of dearness to her simply that she might thwart and taunt me? How could I teach her to forget? How could I teach myself to forget? At the back of my mind I loved her the more because of her perversity.