But oh my heart! Then a terrific leap!... His whole form bulked, loomed. Eleven years descended on him like a Nasmyth hammer. He seemed to take the very brain out of my head and to put it, not in France at all, but into a house in Surrey with a pond in front of it, while he, with a punt-pole in his hand, brought a piece of water-starwort into Julia Oliphant's hand---- His arm, both his arms, were over his face as he tried to hide it all from her. No cry broke from him now. But her arms were locked desperately about his waist. She would never let him go. Then somewhere a dog yapped, and at the sound the horrible life-slide ceased. It ceased because it could not go further. How could it go further than that side-street off Piccadilly in which the woman who had written _The Parthian Arrow_ had set a dog upon the author of _An Ape in Hell_? Already I had started forward, but my foot caught in the scrub, and I found myself rolling, clutching wildly in the air for something to hold. But I swear it was for them and not for myself that I feared. Then, as they slowly swayed outward together by the mountain-ash, the beautiful, re-transfiguring thing happened. A stupid woman with a wretched little pet dog! A rebuff on a pavement over a miserable literary squabble! Was it for _this_ that the years had changed on his face as the hues change on a spinning top? Was _that_ all that this commonplace apparition of a woman had reminded him of? Why, he had thought it had been something important, something to do with the peace of churches, the beauty of coloured windows, the glorious thunder-roll from the organ! He had thought it had something to do with his boyhood's dreams, aspirations, vows! But only _this_!... It was not worth the trouble of having sought it. He had better get back to his deliverance. He laughed. The vane whirred in the opposite direction. He began to go back to Jennie---- He swam back to her across the Channel, knowing now that she awaited him on the other side---- He ran at Ambleteuse--ran swiftly to her. His eyes met hers in the glow of the headlights at Ker Annic---- Once more he stood with her in that Tower of dead and forgotten doves--fled on silent wheels with her through the night--in that upper room in the Rue de la Cordonnerie took her, stainless, into his own virgin arms---- He was here again, back at the Château de Beaumanoir; young, beautiful, innocent, grave, his arm dropped now, looking into her eyes, calling to her. "_Look--look at me--yes, look, Jennie!_" "Oh, my God, catch them!" Madge screamed.