"Oh, no, you haven't; you're all of you there, only you've pushed some of it away out of sight." She wondered if he were right. Was it possible that all that had once made Joan Ogden, was lurking somewhere in her still? She shuddered. "I don't want to go back!" she said fiercely. "Oh, Richard, I don't want ever to go back!" "Not back, but forward," he corrected. "Just go forward with your whole self." 2 The time that Richard could afford to take from his work had come to an end, it was his last day at Lynton. "Let's walk to Watersmeet this afternoon, Joan," he suggested. "It's such a perfect day." "I oughtn't to leave Mother," she said doubtfully. "She doesn't seem very well." "Oh, she's all right, my dear; I've been up to see her and she's only a little over-tired. After all, at her age, she's bound to feel tired sometimes." Joan weakened. "Well, wait a minute, then, while I go and say good-bye." They made their way down the steep hill and over the bridge to the far side of the river. The water was rushing in a noisy torrent between the rocks and boulders. "Oh! How I love the noise of it," he exclaimed. "It's life, just life!" She looked at his lined and ageing face and marvelled at his enthusiasms. He was so full of them still and of a great self-courage that nothing had ever had the power to break. They strolled along the narrow path under the fresh spring green, keeping the river that Richard loved beside them all the way. He took her hand and held it and she did not resist; she was feeling very grateful towards this friend who had come from the world and found her. Presently she grew tired, it was hot down there by the river. He noticed her lagging steps: "Rest, my dear, we've walked too far." They sat down under the trees and for a long time neither spoke. He was the first to break the silence: "Joan, will you marry me?" he said abruptly. It was the same old familiar phrase that she had heard so often before, and she found it hard to believe that they were two middle-aged people instead of the boy and girl of twenty years ago, but in another moment she had flushed with annoyance. "Is that joke in very good taste, Richard?" He stared at her. "Joke? But I mean it!" he stammered. She sprang up and he followed her. "Richard, have you gone quite mad?" "I was never more sane in my life; I ask you: Will you marry me?" She looked at him incredulously, but something in the expression of his eyes told her that he did mean it. "Oh, Richard," she said with a catch in her voice, "I can't! I never could, you know." He said: "Joan, if I weren't so ridiculously middle-aged, I'd go down on my knees, here in the grass, and beg you to take me. I want you more than anything else in the world." She said: "You've made some awful mistake. There's nothing of me to want; I'm empty, just a husk."