"You think so?" He drew a little nearer to her; his disengaged hand, hanging at his side, brushed lightly against hers. "I don't think that myself. But you see I have met much kindness here, and--forgive my saying so--it is such a happiness in itself to know you. I doubt whether you understand what a priceless pleasure that is to me." "It is very flattering of you to say so," Prudence broke in hastily, and not so much turned the conversation as jerked it into an impersonal channel. "Look at that gorgeous splash of red on those clouds. Isn't it just as though they were catching fire?" "Yes," he said in a flattened voice, feeling the rebuff; "it's very fine." "Isn't it? And that warm light on the trees... You can see it spreading along the branches. They're all aglow. If it could only last!" "`The light of the whole world dies when day is done,'" quoted the curate sentimentally, and gazed in rapt admiration upon her face which was all aglow too, but owed nothing of its colour to the sunset. "You look like one inspired," he added. "I wish I could sketch you as I see you now." Prudence made an impatient movement. "I don't believe you care a bit for beautiful scenery," she said. "I do," he assured her eagerly. "I admire everything beautiful. I... Never mind the sunset now. I'm thinking of you. I can't think of anything else. I want to--" "Oh!" she interrupted, with a note of sharp relief in her voice, and turned an embarrassed face in the direction of a solitary pedestrian, who appeared opportunely round a bend in the road, and slowly advanced, bearing a bundle in her arms, which at first the girl failed to recognise for an infant, wrapped in an old shawl. "There's some one I want to speak to," she said, and blessed Bessie Clapp for her timely appearance--"some one I know." "I'll wait," he said, still resolute though considerably ruffled at the interruption. Prudence regarded him frowningly. "No," she insisted, "you mustn't wait. I want to see her alone. I shall walk back with her." "That isn't altogether kind," he said--"to dismiss me. But I may see you another time?" He held out his hand and waited. If he expected a direct answer to his tentative suggestion, he was disappointed. Prudence shook hands hurriedly, murmured a breathless good-bye, and left him to mount his cycle and ride in unclerical mood to his neglected meeting, where he accounted for his unpunctuality by confessing to a puncture which he omitted to explain was caused by a thorn which he had painstakingly placed in the road and ridden over when a quarter of a mile from the town. Which proves what an amount of trouble a conscientious person will take in the insincere evasion of a direct lie.