Columbus was waiting with pathetic patience to be taken for a walk, and overpoweringly hot though it was she had not the heart to keep him any longer.  But she could not face the full blaze of noon on the shore, and she turned back up the shady church lane with a vague memory of having seen a stile at the entrance of a wood somewhere along its winding length.

The church-goers had dispersed by that time, but at the gate of the schoolhouse which was a few yards above the church she saw a group of boys waiting clamorously, and just as she found her stile she saw Green come out dressed in flannels with a bath-towel round his neck.  The boys swarmed all about him like a crowd of excited puppies, and Juliet turned into the wood with a smile.  So he had refused the squire’s invitation to luncheon!  She was very glad of that.

The green glades of the wood received her; she wandered forward with a delightful sense of well-being.  The thought of London came to her—­the heat and the dust and the fumes of petrol—­the chattering crowds under the parched trees—­the kaleidoscopic glitter of fashion at its crudest and most amazing.  She knew exactly what they were all doing at that precise moment.  She visualized the shifting, restless feverish throng with a vividness that embraced every detail.  And she turned her face up to the tree-tops and revelled in her solitude.  Only last week she had been in that seething whirlpool, borne helplessly hither and thither like driftwood, caught here or flung there by any chance current.  Only last week she had felt the sudden drawing of the vortex, sucking her down with appalling swiftness.  Only last week!  And to-day she was free.  She had awakened to the danger almost at the eleventh hour, and she had escaped.  Thank God she had escaped in time!

She suddenly wished that she had remembered to utter her thanksgiving during that very monotonous service instead of going to sleep.  But somehow it seemed just as appropriate out here under the glorious beeches.  She sat down on a mossy root and drank in the sweetness with a deep content.  Columbus was busy trying to unearth a wood-louse that had eluded him in a tuft of grass.  She watched him lazily.

He persevered for a long time, till in fact the tuft of grass was practically demolished, and then at last, failing in his quest, he relinquished the search, and with a deep sigh lay down by her side.

She laid a caressing hand upon him, and ruffled his grizzled hair.  “I’d be lonely without you, Columbus,” she said.

Columbus smiled at the compliment and snapped inconsequently at a fly.  “I wish we had brought some lunch with us,” remarked his mistress.  “Then we needn’t have gone back.  Why didn’t you think of it, Columbus?”

Columbus couldn’t say really, but he wriggled his nose into the caressing hand and gave her to understand that lunch really didn’t matter.  Then very suddenly he extricated it again and uttered a growl that might have risen from the heart of a lion.