“It was not your fault, you had done nothing ... you just were not as I expected you. You had cut yourself shaving, for one thing.” He put his hand to his chin involuntarily, there was barely a scratch. “As we walked back from the station my heart felt quite dead and cold. I hated the scratch on your cheek, the shape of your hat, everything.” He turned pale. “I wondered how I was going to bear two whole days, what I should say to you.” “We talked!” “I know, but it was outside talk, forced, laboured. You remember, ‘How warm the weather was in London’; and that the train was not too full for comfort. You had papers in your hand, the _Saturday Review_, the _Spectator_. You spoke of an article by Runciman in the first.” “You seemed interested.” “I was thinking how we were going to get through the two days. What I had ever seen in you, why I thought I liked you so much.” He was quite dumb by now, the sunken eyes were full of pain, the straight austere mouth was only a line; he no longer touched the hem of her dress. “You left me in the garden of the hotel when you went to book a room, to leave your bag. I sat on a seat in the garden and looked at the sea, the blue wonder of the sea, the jagged coast-line, and one rock that stood out, then hills and always more hills, the sky so blue, spring in the air. Gabriel ...” she leaned forward, touched him lightly on the shoulder. A deep flush came over his face, but he did not move nor put up his hand to take hers. “You were only gone ten minutes. I could not have borne for you to have been away longer. There were a thousand things I wanted to say to you, that I knew I could say to no one but you. About the spring and my heart hunger, what it meant.” “And when I came out I suppose all you remembered was that I had cut myself shaving?” She seemed astonished at the bitterness of his tone. “You are not angry with me, are you?” “No! Not angry. How could I be?” “When you came out and I felt rather than saw you were moving toward me across the grass I thought of nothing but that you were coming; that we were going to have tea together, on the ricketty iron table, that I should pour it out for you. That after that we should walk here together, and then you would go home with me, dine together at Carbies, talk and talk and talk....” He could not help taking her hand again, because she gave it to him, but his face was set and serious. “Tell me, is it the same with you as it is with me? Am I a stranger to you sometimes? Different from what you expect? Do I disappoint you, and leave you cold, almost as if you disliked me? Don’t answer. I expect, I know it is the same with you. You find me plain, gone off, you wonder what you ever saw in me.” He answered with a quiet yet passionate sincerity: