Slowly she descended the long and winding hill leading to the village.  From the few scattered cottages and farms in sight, flags were fluttering out.  Groups of school children were scattered along the road, waving little flags and singing.  Over the wide valley below her, with its woody hills and silver river, floated great cloud-shadows, chasing and chased by the sun.  There were wild roses in the hedges, and perfume in every gust of wind.  The summer was at its height, and the fire and sap of it were running full-tilt in Helena’s pulses.

Far down the winding road she saw at last a man on a motor bicycle—­bare-headed, and long-bodied.

Up he came, and soon was near enough to wave to her, while Helena was still scolding her own emotions.  When he flung himself off beside her, she saw at once that he had come in an exultant mood expecting triumph.  And immediately something perverse in her—­or was it merely the old primeval instinct of the pursued maiden—­set itself to baffle him.

“Very nice to see you!” she smiled, as she gave him a passive hand—­“but why aren’t you in the Mall?”

“My Sovereign had not expressed any burning desire for my presence.  Can’t we go to-night and feed a bonfire?”

“Several, if you like.  I have watched the building of three.  But it will rain.”

“That won’t matter,” he said joyously.  “Nothing will matter!” And again his ardent look challenged in her the Eternal Feminine.

“I don’t agree.  I hate a wet mackintosh dripping into my boots, and Cousin Philip won’t see any fun in it if it rains.”

He drew up suddenly.

“Philip!” he said, with a frown of irritation.  “What has Philip to do with it?”

“He arrives to-night by the London train.”

He resumed his walk beside her, in silence, pushing his bicycle.  Had she done it of malice prepense?  No—­impossible!  He had only telegraphed his own movements to her late on the previous evening, much too late to make any sudden arrangement with Philip, who was coming from an Eastern county.

“He is coming to find out your plans?”

“I suppose so.  But I have no plans.”

He stole a look at her.  Yes—­there was change in her, even since they had met last:—­a richer, intenser personality, suggested by a new self-mastery.  She seemed to him older—­and a thought remote.  Fears flew through him.  What had been passing in her mind since he had seen her last? or in Philip’s?  Had he been fooled after all by those few wild words from Peter, which had reached him in Lancashire, bidding him catch his opportunity, or rue the loss of it for ever?

She saw the effervescence in him die down, and became gracious at once.  Especially because they were now in sight of the inn, and of Lucy Friend sitting in the little garden beside the road.  Geoffrey pulled himself together, and prepared to play the game that Helena set him, until the afternoon and the walk she could not deny him, should give him his chance.