To Nan that day was like the repetition of an old story. Once before--how long ago was it?--once before she had drifted up this quiet stream, between gnarled trees and whispering rushes, to the gray inn where a crisis in her life had threatened. She recalled Jehane, dark and tragic, with trailing hands. She could see Billy, gay and careless. Peter was like him, and Kay was very much what she had been then.--Her eyes fell on Cherry; she examined her slightness, the frailty of her throat, her astonishing gray eyes looking out of a face of pallor, the delicate mist of hair sweeping across the whiteness of her forehead. Not the girl for Peter! There wasn't a girl good enough. And then she tried to believe that she was foolish. It hadn't happened to him yet--not yet. And the parting--it was the same as long ago. Everything was repeating itself. She and Kay and Billy stepped aboard the ferry. At the last moment Glory said she would accompany them. The man pulled on the rope; the ferry lumbered out into the stream. Peter and the girl, and Hardcastle and Riska were waving to them from the bank. Nan had never thought that she could feel so cruel toward anybody. As she crossed the meadows she looked back. Peter and the girl, pigmy figures now, were still waving. Jehane and Billy had waved to her like that, standing near together. The old pang! And then she looked at Glory, walking quietly with her head bent, never turning. In a flash little memories, trifles in themselves, sprang up and became significant, each one pointing in the same direction. She stole forward and took Glory's hand. Hardcastle and Riska had vanished; their punt was gone from the landing. Upstream the river was lost to view in a slow bend. No one was in sight. An atmosphere of secrecy had settled down. From arbors of the inn and tufted places along the banks came the indistinct murmur of voices. The country looked uninhabited, stretching away for miles in squares and triangles of meadows, each one different in coloring from the next. Through the green panorama of trees and hedges the winding of the river was traceable by the flowered freshness that it left. Overhead, casting fantastic shadows, drifted white unwieldy clouds.