But Dunstan was looking far ahead along the vista of the leafy road. He said no more, only as Minga, sitting back, tried to start up some of their old rallying songs and sallies the boy kept repeating dreamily, "She called us mates and it seems queer, for somehow I've always thought--you heard? She called us 'Mates,' Minga." Perhaps it was the gypsy's prophecy making them conscious, perhaps it was the green world surrounding them like a round egg surrounding primal man and woman. But they grew silent and awed as though they walked toward a large surcharged destiny, so as they halted the car and took out their lunch basket they felt constrained; the rescue of Terence O'Brien would not take place until nearly five o'clock; they must pass the time alone together in this cathedral solemnity of summer. They tried not to look at each other for fear they should see in each other's eyes things that would snatch away their control. They stood a little away from each other, troubled, questioning, half afraid, yet curious. CHAPTER XXIV "TERRY!" Evening came heavily, the river, flattened to an unearthly yellow calm, had thrown back all day field-heaviness, the prolific scent of grasses. The house was hot, the trees held lax droop of layered leaves. Languidly in the tepid air moved hundreds of unseen little ships of pollen, bringing to human breathing a thickness as of a new element. The fire-flies carrying their lanterns slowly up from dark grass, clotted beneath a shrub, or hung in tiny constellations by a tree; while out on the roadways the black automobiles rolled pompously like haughty monsters whose eyes, scornful and contemptuous, looked far ahead past all poetry of tree and water toward future summer nights when all the world should be a shattering brilliance of moving engines.