“So this is your last day here.”

He gazed about him out towards the sea, eastwards down the slope to the dark trees of Arundel, backwards over the weald to the high ridge of Blackdown.

“I shall look back upon it.”

“Yes,” she said.  “It’s a day to look back upon.”

She ran over in her mind the days of this last month since he had come to the inn at Great Beeding and friends of her family had written to her parents of his coming.  “It’s the most perfect of all your days here.  I am glad.  I want you to carry back with you good memories of our Sussex.”

“I shall do that,” said he, “but for another reason.”

Stella pushed on a foot or two ahead of him.

“Well,” she said, “no doubt the Temple will be stuffy.”

“Nor was I thinking of the Temple.”

“No?”

“No.”

She rode on a little way whilst he followed.  A great bee buzzed past their heads and settled in the cup of a wild rose.  In a copse beside them a thrush shot into the air a quiverful of clear melody.

Stella spoke again, not looking at her companion, and in a low voice and bravely with a sweet confusion of her blood.

“I am very glad to hear you say that, for I was afraid that I had let you see more than I should have cared for you to see—­unless you had been anxious to see it too.”

She waited for an answer, still keeping her distance just a foot or two ahead, and the answer did not come.  A vague terror began to possess her that things which could never possibly be were actually happening to her.  She spoke again with a tremor in her voice and all the confidence gone out of it.  Almost it appealed that she should not be put to shame before herself.

“It would have been a little humiliating to remember, if that had been true.”

Then upon the ground she saw the shadow of Thresk’s horse creep up until the two rode side by side.  She looked at him quickly with a doubtful wavering smile and looked down again.  What did all the trouble in his face portend?  Her heart thumped and she heard him say: 

“Stella, I have something very difficult to say to you.”

He laid a hand gently upon her arm, but she wrenched herself free.  Shame was upon her—­shame unendurable.  She tingled with it from head to foot.  She turned to him suddenly a face grown crimson and eyes which brimmed with tears.

“Oh,” she cried aloud, “that I should have been such a fool!” and she swayed forward in her saddle.  But before he could reach out an arm to hold her she was upright again, and with a cut of her whip she was off at a gallop.

“Stella,” he cried, but she only used her whip the more.  She galloped madly and blindly over the grass, not knowing whither, not caring, loathing herself.  Thresk galloped after her, but her horse, maddened by her whip and the thud of the hoofs behind, held its advantage.  He settled down to the pursuit with a jumble of thoughts in his brain.