Then the walk began. For the first mile or two it was pleasant. Then Elizabeth's shoes began to hurt her. They were smart brown shoes, with deceitful wooden heels. In her wanderings over the cobblestones of Sluys streets one heel had cracked itself. Now it split altogether. She began to limp. "Won't you take my arm?" said he. "No, thank you. I don't really need it. I'll rest a minute, though, if I may." She sat down, leaning against a tree, and looked out at the darting swallows, dimpling here and there the still green water. The level sunlight struck straight across the pastures, turning them to gold. The long shadows of the trees fell across the canal and lay black on the reeds at the other side. The hour was full of an ample dignity of peace. They walked another mile. Elizabeth could not conceal her growing lameness. "Something is wrong with your foot," said he. "Have you hurt it?" "It's these silly shoes; the heel's broken." "Take them off and let me see." She submitted without a protest, sat down, took off the shoes, and gave them to him. He looked at them kindly, contemptuously. "Silly little things!" he said, and she, instead of resenting the impertinence, smiled. Then he tore off the heels and dug out the remaining bristle of nails with his pocket-knife. "That'll be better," said he cheerfully. Elizabeth put on the damp shoes. The evening dew lay heavy on the towing-path, and she hardly demurred at all to his fastening the laces. She was very tired. Again he offered his arm; again she refused it. Then, "Elizabeth, take my arm at once!" he said sharply. She took it, and they had kept step for some fifty paces before she said-- "Then you knew all the time?" "Am I blind or in my dotage? But you forbade me to meet you except as a stranger. I have an obedient nature." They walked on in silence. He held her hand against his side strongly, but, as it seemed, without sentiment. He was merely helping a tired woman-stranger on a long road. But the road seemed easier to Elizabeth because her hand lay so close to him; she almost forgot how tired she was, and lost herself in dreams, and awoke, and taught herself to dream again, and wondered why everything should seem so different just because one's hand lay on the sleeve of a grey flannel jacket. "Why should I be so abominably happy?" she asked herself, and then lapsed again into the dreams that were able to wipe away three years, as a kind hand might wipe three little tear-drops from a child's slate, scrawled over with sums done wrong. When she remembered that he was married, she salved her conscience innocently. "After all," she said, "it can't be wrong if it doesn't make _him_ happy; and, of course, he doesn't care, and I shall never see him again after to-night."