At the week-end Cathleen went to Rickham. She found René in overalls taking down the back axle of a car. His face and hands and hair were smeared with grease. "Hullo!" he said. And Cathleen answered: "I hope I'm not in the way." "All right. Only stand clear of the machine. There never was such ubiquitous stuff as motor grease. I shan't be long. It's a broken crown-wheel, I think-- Oh! here's Casey. Casey, take Miss Bentley round the garden. Have tea in the parlor, and I'll join you when I've cleaned up." It was a couple of hours before René joined them. During that time Cathleen had to listen to his praises, and to hear how the business, after a slow beginning, had begun to pick up, until now they had almost as much work as they could do with their present staff. "I'm sorry," said René. "It's a new customer, and he wants the car for to-morrow morning, and I couldn't take any of the men off their jobs. It is good to see you. Have you seen the house?" No. Casey had only shown her the garden. After tea René took her over the house. "It wants you," he said. "I knew that. I sent in my resignation yesterday." "When will you come?" "In a month's time." "Forever and ever?" "It feels like that now." "Yes. There doesn't seem to have been anything but you and I. You're a little slip of a woman to fill the whole world." And he lifted her clean off her feet. She lay back in his arms and her eyes closed, and he could feel her whole body surrender to his strength, her whole spirit come out to meet his in love. IX YOUNG LOVE DREAMING EVERY year they visited Scotland and brought new stores of happiness to the dell where they had first discovered it. Always, René declared, through their joy there ran the song of the burn, and the wind in the trees, the beauty that had first awakened him. They made high holiday. Cathleen liked to stroll about the woods or lie in them with a book (she could hardly get him to read at all). He loved to wander over the moors alone or to go striding over the hills, and to come back to her in the evening. When they spent their days apart they would meet in the dell, and, as of old time, he would make a couch of bracken for her. And he would lie by her side and rejoice in her beauty, fondle her, praise her, tease her. "I don't believe," he would say, "we shall ever be old." "Not when you look at the children" (they had three) "and see how they grow?" "Least of all then. I watch them and discover new worlds in them, and often through them I discover new wonders in you." "Don't you know me by this time?" "Every day I find you more astonishing and strange. Sometimes I come into your room in the morning and watch you sleeping, and I feel very lonely then. You are so remote. It is like waiting for the dawn. Then I see consciousness waking in you. Then your eyes open and you gaze innocently out upon the world. And you see me and are satisfied." "And you?"