Retrospect came naturally after that letter, for she had written at the end how she had found the true worth of "restraint"; it would have been just a phrase in a letter if I had not remembered, as she must have when she wrote it, that the word had a context, and that the context lay in a long summer afternoon on a silent reach of the river many miles from Maidenhead.... One day that summer I had suggested to her that, as the world was becoming a nuisance with its heat and dust, we might go and stay on the river for a few days, but she had said, quite firmly, "No, I can't do that. I am not yet old enough to put my name down for the divorce stakes, so if you don't mind, Dikran, we will call that bet off and think of something else. For if that same husband heard of my staying on the river with a young man of uncelibate eye and uncertain occupation, he would at once take steps about it, and although I like you well enough as a man, I couldn't bear you as a co-respondent.... But if you really do want to stay on the river, I will get the Hartshorns to ask us both down, for they have a delightful house on a little hill, from which you can see the twilight creeping over the Berkshire downs across the river." "Oh, we can't do that," I said; "Guy Hartshorn is such a stiffnecked ass and his wife is dull enough to spoil any river--" "Tolerance, my dear, is what you lack," she said; "tolerance and a proper understanding of the relation between a stiffnecked ass and a possible host. And Guy, poor dear, always does his duty by his guests.... Please don't be silly about it, Dikran. The Hartshorns distinctly need encouragement as hosts, so you and I will go down and encourage them. And if you can manage to cloak your evil thoughts behind a hearty manner and watch Guy as he swings a racing punt down the river, you will learn more about punting and the reason why Englishmen are generally considered to be superior to foreigners than I could teach you in a lifetime." We had been two days at the house on the little hill by the river (for, of course, we went there) before, on the third afternoon, after lunch, our chance came, and Shelmerdene and I were at last alone on the river; I had not the energy to do more than paddle very leisurely and look from here to there, but always in the end to come back to the woman who lay facing me against the pale green cushions of the Hartshorn punt, steeped in the happy sunshine of one of those few really warm days which England now and again manages to steal from the molten South, and exhibits in a new green and golden loveliness. From round a bend of the river we could quite clearly see the ivy-covered Georgian house of our host, perched imperiously up on the top of its little hill, but not imperiously enough to prevent the outlet of two days' impatience in the curse I vented on it.