And, as a beautiful background to the gross realism of Mothers' meetings and Parish tiresomenesses, was always the atmosphere of the golden mornings, the dew and the stillness, the gleam of his white coat among the pine-trees. For he was always first at the tryst now. Betty was drunk; and she was too young to distinguish between vintages. When she had been sober she had feared intoxication. Now she was drunk, she thanked Heaven that she was sober. CHAPTER IV. INVOLUNTARY. Six days of sunlight and clear air, of mornings as enchanting as dreams, of dreams as full of magic as May mornings. Then an interminable Sunday hot and sultry, with rolling purple clouds and an evening of thunder and heavy showers. A magenta sunset, a night working, hidden in its own darkness, its own secret purposes, and a Monday morning gray beyond belief, with a soft steady rain. Betty stood for full five minutes looking out at the straight fine fall, at the white mist spread on the lawn, the blue mist twined round the trees, listening to the plash of the drops that gathered and fell from the big wet ivy leaves, to the guggle of the water-spout, the hiss of smitten gravel. "He'll never go," she thought, and her heart sank. He, shaving, in the chill damp air by his open dimity-draped window, was saying: "She'll be there, of course. Women are all perfectly insensible to weather." Two mackintoshed figures met in the circle of pines. "You have come," he said. "I never dreamed you would. How cold your hand is!" He held it for a moment warmly clasped. "I thought it might stop any minute," said Betty; "it seemed a pity to waste a morning." "Yes," he said musingly, "it would be a pity to waste a morning. I would not waste one of these mornings for a kingdom." Betty fumbled with her sketching things as a sort of guarantee of good faith. "But it's too wet to work," said she. "I suppose I'd better go home again." "That seems a dull idea--for me," he said; "it's very selfish, of course, but I'm rather sad this morning. Won't you stay a little and cheer me up?" Betty asked nothing better. But even to her a tete-a-tete in a wood, with rain pattering and splashing on leaves and path and resonant mackintoshes, seemed to demand some excuse. "I should think breakfast and being dry would cheer you up better than anything," said she. "And it's very wet here." "Hang breakfast! But you're right about the wetness. There's a shed in the field yonder. A harrow and a plough live there; they're sure to be at home on a day like this. Let's go and ask for their hospitality." "I hope they'll be nice to us," laughed Betty; "it's dreadful to go where you're not wanted." "How do you know?" he asked, laughing too. "Come, give me your hand and let's run for it."