The little meal passed gaily, and after it Lucy Friend watched—­not without trepidation—­Helena’s various devices for staving off the crisis.  She had two important letters to write; she must go and watch Mr. McCready sketching, as she had promised to do, or the old fellow would never forgive her; and finally she invited the fuming M.P. to fish the preserved water with her, accompanied by the odd-man as gilly.  At this Geoffrey’s patience fairly broke.  He faced her, crimson, in the inn parlour; forgetting Lucy altogether and standing in front of the door, so that Lucy could not escape and could only roll herself in a curtain and look out of the window.

“I didn’t come here to fish, Helena—­or to sketch—­but simply and solely to talk to you!  And I have come a long way.  Suppose we take a walk?”

Helena eyed him.  She was a little pale—­but composed.

“At your service.  Lead on, Sir Oracle!”

They went out together, Geoffrey taking command, and Lucy watched them depart, across the foot-bridge, and by a green path that would lead them before long to the ferny slopes of the mountain beyond the oak-wood.  As Helena was mounting the bridge, a servant of the inn ran out with a telegram which had just arrived and gave it her.

Helena peered at the telegram, and then with a dancing smile thrust it into her pocket without a word.

Her mood, as they walked on, was now, it seemed, eagerly political.  She insisted on hearing his own account of his successful speech in the House; she wished to discuss his relations with the Labour party, which were at the moment strained, on the question of Coal Nationalization; she asked for his views on the Austrian Treaty, and on the prospects of the Government.  He lent himself to her caprice, so long as they were walking one behind the other through a crowded oak-wood and along a narrow path where she could throw her questions back over her shoulder, herself well out of reach.  But presently they came out on a glorious stretch of fell, clothed with young green fern, and running up into a purple crag fringed with junipers.  Then he sprang to her side, and Helena knew that the hour had come and the man.  There was a flat rock on the slope below the crag, under a group of junipers, and Helena presently found herself sitting there, peremptorily guided by her companion, and feeling dizzily that she was beginning to lose control of the situation, as Geoffrey sank down into the fern beside her.

“At last!” he said, drawing a long breath—­“At last!”

He lay looking up at her, his long face working with emotion—­the face of an intellectual, with that deep scar on the temple, where a fragment of shrapnel had struck him on the first day of the Somme advance.

“Unkind Helena!” he said, in a low voice that shook—­“unkind Helena!”

Her lips framed a retort.  Then suddenly the tears rushed into her eyes, and she covered them with her hands.