Miss Bretherton looked at him curiously.  It was as though for the first time she connected the man himself with his reputation and his pictures, that the great artist in him was more than a name to her.  She listened to him sympathetically, and looked at the window closely, as though trying to follow all he had been saying.  But it struck Mrs. Stuart that there was often a bewilderment in her manner which had been strange to it on her first entrance into London.  Those strong emphatic ways Kendal had first noticed in her were less frequent.  Sometimes she struck Mrs. Stuart as having the air of a half-blindfold person trying to find her way along strange roads.

They passed out into the cool and darkness of the cloisters, and through the new buildings, and soon they were in the Broad Walk, trees as old as the Commonwealth bending overhead, and in front the dazzling green of the June meadows, the shining river in the distance, and the sweep of cloud-flecked blue arching in the whole.

The gentlemen were waiting for them, metamorphosed in boating-clothes, and the two boats were ready.  A knot of idlers and lookers-on watched the embarkation, for on Sunday the river is forsaken, and they were the only adventurers on its blue expanse.  Off they pushed, Miss Bretherton, Kendal, Mr. Stuart, and Forbes in one boat, the remaining members of the party in the other.  Isabel Bretherton had thrown off the wrap which she always carried with her, and which she had gathered round her in the cathedral, and it lay about her in green fur-edged folds, bringing her white dress into relief, the shapely fall of the shoulders and all the round slimness of her form.  As Kendal took the stroke oar, after he had arranged everything for her comfort, he asked her if Oxford was what she had expected.

‘A thousand times better!’ she said eagerly.

’You have a wonderful power of enjoyment.  One would think your London life would have spoilt it a little.’

’I don’t think anything ever could.  I was always laughed at for it as a child, I enjoy everything.’

’Including such a day as you had yesterday?  How can you play the White Lady twice in one day?  It’s enough to wear you out.’

’Oh, everybody does it.  I was bound to give a matinee to the profession some time, and yesterday had been fixed for it for ages.  But I have only given three matinees altogether, and I shan’t give another before my time is up.’

‘That’s a good hearing,’ said Kendal.  ’Do you get tired of the White Lady?’

‘Yes,’ she said emphatically; ‘I am sick of her.  But,’ she added, bending forward with her hands clasped on her knee, so that what she said could be heard by Kendal only; ’have you heard, I wonder, what I have in my head for the autumn?  Oh well, we must not talk of it now; I have no right to make it public yet.  But I should like to tell you when we get to Nuneham, if there’s an opportunity.’