the quiet water.  There had been rain, torrential rain, just before the Sarratts arrived, so that the river was full and noisy, and all the little becks clattering down the fell, in their haste to reach the lake, were boasting to the summer air, as though in forty-eight hours of rainlessness they would not be as dry and dumb as ever again.  The air was fresh, in spite of the Midsummer sun, and youth and health danced in the veins of the lovers.  And yet not without a touch of something feverish, something abnormal, because of that day—­that shrouded day—­standing sentinel at the end of the week.  They never spoke of it, but they never forgot it.  It entered into each clinging grasp he gave her hand as he helped her up or down some steep or rugged bit of path—­into the lingering look of her brown eyes, which thanked him, smiling—­into the moments of silence, when they rested amid the springing bracken, and the whole scene of mountain, cloud and water spoke with that sudden tragic note of all supreme beauty, in a world of ‘brittleness.’  But they were not often silent.  There was so much to say.  They were still exploring each other, after the hurry of their marriage, and short engagement.  For a time she chattered to him about her own early life—­their old red-brick house in a Manchester suburb, with its good-sized rooms, its mahogany doors, its garden, in which her father used to work—­his only pleasure, after his wife’s death, besides ‘the concerts’—­’You know we’ve awfully good music in Manchester!’ As for her own scattered and scanty education, she had begun to speak of it almost with bitterness.  George’s talk and recollections betrayed quite unconsciously the standards of the academic or highly-trained professional class to which all his father’s kindred belonged; and his only sister, a remarkably gifted girl, who had died of pneumonia at eighteen, just as she was going to Girton, seemed to Nelly, when he occasionally described or referred to her, a miracle—­a terrifying miracle—­of learning and accomplishment.

Once indeed, she broke out in distress:—­’Oh, George, I don’t know anything!  Why wasn’t I sent to school!  We had a wretched little governess who taught us nothing.  And then I’m lazy—­I never was ambitious—­like Bridget.  Do you mind that I’m so stupid—­do you mind?’

And she laid her hands on his knee, as they sat together among the fern, while her eyes searched his face in a real anxiety.

What joy it was to laugh at her—­to tease her!

’How stupid are you, darling?  Tell me, exactly.  It is of course a terrible business.  If I’d only known—­’

But she would be serious.

’I don’t know any languages, George!  Just a little French—­but you’d be ashamed if you heard me talking it.  As to history—­don’t ask!’ She shrugged her shoulders despairingly.  Then her face brightened.  ’But there’s something!  I do love poetry—­I’ve read a lot of poetry.’

‘That’s all right—­so have I,’ he said, promptly.