A steep stone staircase descends between the villas, in the chinks of which hawkweed and poppies and pimpernel have seeded themselves. At the top of it a winding lane leads to the church, and from this there branches off the Port Blanc road. In that direction we walked, and in ten minutes were among cornfields and hedges, clumps of elms and coppices of oak. Ploughs and chain-harrows lay by the footpaths, and the sea might have been a hundred miles away. "Sure you're not overdoing it?" she asked as we took a little path under a convolvulus-starred hedge. "Quite all right, thanks." "Oh, smell the air! This is a jolly place! Which way is St Briac from here?" "Over that way." The dark eyes sent a message. "Well, now tell me what his painting's like. I expect it's as wonderful as his writing was." "It rather struck me--I don't know much about it--but I fancied it was on somewhat similar lines." "What sort of lines?" "The old story--starting anew from the very beginning of everything--nothing to do with anything else, past, present or to come." "Of course he would be the same.... But now tell me--we've hardly had ten words yet, what with Madge and shopping and your silly illness and one thing and another. You say he's got to twenty?" "Thereabouts." "And he hasn't moved since--you know what I mean?" "That isn't quite clear." "What isn't there clear about it?" "He thinks he's moving--he hopes to move--forward again." She stopped to stare at me. Already the few days' sun had softly browned her natural milky pallor. "He _what_!" she gasped.... "But that's wilder than all the rest put together!" "It's what he thinks. There's simply his word for it. He can't explain it. But he's staking everything on it." "Everything? What?" "His future course, I suppose, whatever that is. By the way, has Madge said anything to you about him?" She stared harder than ever. "Madge! Does Madge know him?" "She doesn't know Derry. But she knows Arnaud. He's been to the house." "He's been ... Oh-h-h-h!" You may call me if you will the most dunderheaded fellow who ever meddled in things he did not understand. I deserve it all and more. All the same I must ask you to believe me when I say that it was not until that "Oh-h-h-h!" broke in an interminable contralto whisper from her lips that I saw what I had done. I had resolved that not one word of Jennie Aird's affairs should she learn from me. As much for her own sake as for Jennie's I had determined to spare her that. And now I had gone and told her that very thing!