So there was nothing more to do.  My suit-case was packed, and when the time came to a quarter past two I got into a hansom and drove to the station.

Almost as soon as I got there, Viola drove up, punctual to the minute.

She knew her own value to men too well to try and enhance it by always being late for an appointment as so many women do.

She looked fresh and lovely in palest grey, her rose-tinted face radiant with excitement.

“I haven’t kept you waiting, have I?” was her first exclamation after our greeting.

“I had so much work to do for Aunt Mary all the morning, I thought I should not have time to really get off myself.”

“No, you haven’t kept me waiting,” I answered; “and, if you had, it would not have mattered.  You know I would wait all day for you.”

She glanced up with a wonderful light-filled smile that set every cell in my body singing with delight, and we went down the platform to choose our carriage.

When the train started from Charing Cross the day was dull and heavy-looking; warm, without sunshine.  But after an hour’s run from town we got into an atmosphere of crystal and gold and the Kentish fruit trees stretched round us a sea of pink and white foam under a cloudless sky.

When we stepped out at our destination, a little sleepy country station, the air seemed like nectar to us.  It was the breath of May, real merry, joyous English May at the height of her wayward, uncertain beauty.

We left our light luggage at the station, and walked out from it, choosing at random the first white, undulating road that opened before us.

The little village clustered round the station, but Viola did not want to lodge in the village.

“We can come back to it if we are obliged, but we shall be sure to find a cottage or a wayside inn.”

So we went on slowly in the transparent light of a perfect May afternoon.

There are periods when England both in climate and landscape is perfect, when her delicate, elusive loveliness can compare favourably with the barbaric glory, the wild magnificence of other countries.

On this afternoon a sort of rapture fell upon us both as we went down that winding road.  The call of the cuckoo resounded from side to side, clear and sonorous like a bell, it echoed and re-echoed across our path under the luminous dome of the tranquil sky and over the hedges of flowering thorn, snow-white and laden with fragrance.

Everywhere the fruit trees were in bloom:  delicate masses of white and pink rose against the smiling innocent blue of the sky.

“Now here is the very place,” exclaimed Viola suddenly, and following her eyes I saw behind the high, green hedge bordering the road on which we were walking some red roofs rising, half hidden by the masses of white cherry blossom which hung over them.  A cottage was there boasting a garden in front, a garden that was filled with lilac and laburnum not yet in bloom; filled to overflowing, for the lilac bulged all over the hedge in purple bunches and the laburnum poured its young leaves down on it.  A tiny lawn, rather long-grassed and not innocent of daisies, took up the centre of the garden, and on to this two open casements looked; above again, two open windows, half-lost in the white clouds of cherry bloom.