She had found them again.

A gap in the green walls led into the flower garden, and there, down the path between tall rows of phlox and larkspurs and anchusa, of blue heaped on blue, Aunt Adeline came holding up a tall bunch of flowers, blue on her white gown, blue on her own milk-white and blue.  She came, looking like a beautiful girl; the same, the same; Anne had seen her in dreams, walking like that, tall among the tall flowers.

She never hurried to meet you; hurrying would have spoiled the beauty of her movement; she came slowly, absent-mindedly, stopping now and then to pluck yet another of the blue spires.  Robert stood still in the path to watch her.  She was smiling a long way off, intensely aware of him.

“Is that Anne?” she said.

“Yes, Auntie, really Anne.”

“Well, you are a big girl, aren’t you?”

She kissed her three times and smiled, looking away again over her flower-beds.  That was the difference between Aunt Adeline and Uncle Robert.  His eyes made you important; they held you all the time he talked to you; when he smiled, it was for you altogether and not for himself at all.  Her eyes never looked at you long; her smile wandered, it was half for you and half for herself, for something she was thinking of that wasn’t you.

“What have you done with your father?” she said.

“I was to tell you.  Daddy’s ever so sorry; but he can’t come till to-morrow.  A horrid man kept him on business.”

“Oh?” A little crisping wave went over Aunt Adeline’s face, a wave of vexation.  Anne saw it.

“He is really sorry.  You should have heard him damning and cursing.”

They laughed.  Adeline was appeased.  She took her husband’s arm and drew him to herself.  Something warm and secret seemed to pass between them.

Anne said to herself:  “That’s how people look—­” without finishing her thought.

Lest she should feel shut out he turned to her.

“Well, are you glad to be back again, Anne?” he said.

“Glad?  I’m never glad to be anywhere else.  I’ve been counting the weeks and the days and the minutes.”

“The minutes?”

“Yes.  In the train.”

They had come up on to the flagged terrace.  Anne looked round her.

“Where’s Jerrold?” she said.

And they laughed again.  “There’s no doubt,” said Uncle Robert, “about it being the same Anne.”

ii

A day passed.  John Severn had come.  He was to stay with the Fieldings for the last weeks of his leave.  He had followed Adeline from the hot terrace to the cool library.  When she wanted the sun again he would follow her out.

Robert and Colin were down at the Manor Farm.  Eliot was in the schoolroom, reading.

Jerrold and Anne sat together on the grass under the beech trees, alone.