The horses started, and the cart swung along with its load of passengers and luggage, travelling at a good pace along the hard smooth road. Esme leaned back in her seat and looked about her with happy appreciative eyes. On the upward journey she had longed for a companion to share her joy in the scenery. She recalled her first impressions, as she drove now with Hallam beside her. She had been very tired on that occasion, eye and brain both had been weary. To-day she felt surprisingly well and very alert. The air, the movement, the strong light, all added to her sense of enjoyment; and the presence of the man beside her, his nearness, his unobtrusive care of her, his interest in all which interested her, made the return journey infinitely more wonderful than the journey up the mountain had seemed. She felt extraordinarily happy. And yet she was going away. Soon she and her companion would be parted. It might be that she would never see him after that day. But she could not realise these things. She felt him beside her, heard his voice speaking to her against the mountain wind which blew across them, saw the kindness in the keen eyes when he turned his head to look at her and mark her appreciation of some beauty along the route; and she knew that he mattered to her tremendously; that her feeling for him was a real and profoundly significant emotion, something which had sprung to life suddenly, which would go on growing in her heart after they had separated and gone their different ways. This was the thing which had happened to her. She had looked for something to happen, but she had not dreamed it would be anything like this. She fell to wondering how she would feel when they came to say good-bye, whether she would realise the parting and feel lonely, whether her face would betray her regret? Whether he would see and understand... The journey down occupied considerably less time than the journey up had done; everything seemed to lend itself to speed her departure. But at Coerney there was a wait before the train came in. Hallam took her to the hotel and ordered refreshments, and afterwards they went and sat in the shade of the trees and talked away their last minutes together. She felt that she would have liked to prolong that talk indefinitely; and the minutes slipped away so fast. "It was nice of you to come," she said. "I should be feeling horribly lonely now if I had had this wait alone." "The train's late," he said. "God bless the lack of unpunctuality. I've half a mind to go with you. I don't know why I don't go. I don't know why I stay on in a God-forsaken hole on the top of a mountain which leads nowhere. Do you?" She laughed. "I suppose you like it," she said. "And the air is fine." "A man can't live on air." "But you don't live there," she said. For the first time it occurred to her that she did not know where he lived; she knew surprisingly little about him. "I don't live anywhere; I drift," he said.