He followed her down the slope. She walked in front, her head slightly turned as though she listened to make sure that he followed. He noticed the pride of her handsome body, its erectness and its poise--how it seemed to glide across the grass without sound or motion. He summed her up as being abnormally self-conscious and wilfully undiscoverable. He wondered whether her restraint hid a glorious personality, or served simply as a disguise for shallowness of mind.--And while he analyzed her thus, she was scorning herself for the immodesty of her fear and dumbness. Kneeling down on the landing to unfasten the rope, he pieced his words together. “I ought to apologize for what I implied just now. It must have sounded horribly ungallant to suggest that you should work while I sat idle.” She did not answer till they were seated side by side in the narrow stern. Taking a long stroke with her paddle, she shot a searching glance at him; the veil drew back from her eyes, revealing their smoldering fire. “That's all right. I don't trouble. You needn't mind.” Though she had not blamed him, she had not excused him. Night was falling early; outlines of the country were already growing vague. Edges of things were blurred; from low-lying meadows silver mists were rising. In the great silence grasses rustled as cattle stirred them, the river complained, and a solitary belated bird swept across the dusk with a dull cry. It was dangerous and it was tempting--he could not avoid personalities. He tried to think of other things to say, but they refused to take shape. His perturbation seemed the rumor of what her mind was enacting. Several times inquisitive inquiries were on the tip of his tongue; he checked them. Then her body lurched against him; their shoulders brushed. “You have a beautiful name.” “Indeed! You think so?” “For me it has only one association.” Again she brushed against him. He caught the scent of her hair and, in the twilight, a glimpse of the heavy drooping eyelids. “I mean that poem by William Morris--it's all about Jehane. You remember how it runs: 'Had she come all the way for this'----?” “You're frightened to continue. Isn't that so?” Her tones were cold and quiet. “'Had she come all the way for this, to part at last without a kiss?'--I remember. It's all about dripping woods and a country like this, with a river overflowing its banks, and a man and a girl who were parted forever 'beside the haystack in the floods.' Jehane was supposed to be a witch, wasn't she? 'Jehane the brown! Jehane the brown! Give us Jehane to burn or drown.' There's something like that in the poem---- I suppose I make you think only of tragic things?” “Why suppose that?” “Because I do most people.” “In my case there's no reason for supposing that. I oughtn't to have mentioned it.”