Sir Geoffrey stood up and began to take his rod to pieces. “And are you quite sure that you haven’t been ‘loathing and detesting’ me all the afternoon?” Dorothy picked up her novel and smoothed its leaves reflectively. “I----But no. I won’t make you too conceited. Look, the sun is actually coming out! Don’t you think we might take the Canadian up to the weir? You really ought to be introduced to the big chub under the bridge.” The rain had almost ceased, and when they had transferred themselves into the dainty canoe, a few strokes of the paddle which Miss Vandeleur wielded with such effective grace swept them out into a full flood of delicate evening sunlight. The sky smiled blue through rapidly increasing breaks in the clouds; the sunbeams, slanting from the west, touched with pale gold the quivering trees, which seemed to lift their wet branches and spread their leaves to court the warm caress. A new radiance of colour crept into the landscape, as if it had been a picture from which a smoky glass was withdrawn; the water grew very still--this too was in the manner of a picture--with the peace of a summer evening, brimming with an unbroken surface luminously from bank to bank. Strange guttural cries of water-birds sounded from the reed-beds; from the next reach came the rhythmic pulse of oars, faint splashes, and the brisk rattle of row-locks; voices and laughter floated down from the lock, travelling far beyond belief in the hushed stillness of the evening. The wake of the light canoe trailed unbroken to the shadows of the boathouse, and the wet paddle gleamed as it slid through the water. Presently Dorothy stayed her hand. “What an enchanting world it is!” she murmured, with wide eyes full of the glamour of the setting sun. “Beautiful, beautiful----! How soon one forgets the fogs, and rain, and cold! I feel as if I had lived in this fairyland always.” Her lips trembled a little as she spoke, and Sir Geoffrey found something in the pathos of her youth which held him silent. When they broke the spell of silence, their words were trivial, perhaps, but the language was that of old friends, simple and direct. Sir Geoffrey at least, for whom the charm of the occasion was a gift so rare that he scarcely dared to desecrate it by mental criticism, was far from welcoming the interruption which presently occurred, in the shape of a youth, arrayed in immaculate flannels and the colours of a popular rowing club, who hailed them cheerfully from a light skiff, resting on his sculls and drifting alongside while he rolled a cigarette. III