She turned, smiling.  “I like it very much.”

They had been a long time over tea.  It was half-past five before they started.  He brought an overcoat and put it on her.  He wrapped a rug round her knees and feet and tucked it well in.

“You don’t like rugs,” he said (he knew she didn’t), “but you’ve got to have it.”

She did like it.  She liked his rug and his overcoat, and his little brown horse with the clanking hoofs.  And she liked him, most decidedly she liked him, too.  He was the sort of man you could like.

They were soon out on the moor.

Rowcliffe’s youth rose in him and put words into his mouth.

“Ripping country, this.”

She said it was ripping.

For the life of them they couldn’t have said more about it.  There were no words for the inscrutable ecstasy it gave them.

As they passed Karva Rowcliffe smiled.

“It’s all right,” he said, “my driving you.  Of course you don’t remember, but we’ve met—­several times before.”

“Where?”

“I’ll show you where.  Anyhow, that’s your hill, isn’t it?”

“How did you know it was?”

“Because I’ve seen you there.  The first time I ever saw you—­No, that was a bit farther on.  At the bend of the road.  We’re coming to it.”

They came.

“Just here,” he said.

And now they were in sight of Garthdale.

“Funny I should have thought it was you who were ill.”

“I’m never ill.”

“You won’t be as long as you can walk like that.  And run.  And jump—­”

A horrid pause.

“You did it very nicely.”

Another pause, not quite so horrid.

And then—­“Do you always walk after dark and before sunrise?”

And it was as if he had said, “Why am I always meeting you?  What do you do it for?  It’s queer, isn’t it?”

But he had given her her chance.  She rose to it.

“I’ve done it ever since we came here.” (It was as if she had said “Long before you came.”) “I do it because I like it.  That’s the best of this place.  You can do what you like in it.  There’s nobody to see you.”

("Counting me,” he thought, “as nobody.”)

“I should like to do it, too,” he said—­“to go out before sunrise—­if I hadn’t got to.  If I did it for fun—­like you.”

He knew he would not really have liked it.  But his romantic youth persuaded him in that moment that he would.

XVII

Mary was up in the attic, the west attic that looked on to the road through its shy gable window.