“And if we keep ahead we can talk,” said Rachel.

Nevertheless, although their position some yards in advance of the others made it possible for them to say anything they chose, they were both silent.

“You love me?” Terence asked at length, breaking the silence painfully.  To speak or to be silent was equally an effort, for when they were silent they were keenly conscious of each other’s presence, and yet words were either too trivial or too large.

She murmured inarticulately, ending, “And you?”

“Yes, yes,” he replied; but there were so many things to be said, and now that they were alone it seemed necessary to bring themselves still more near, and to surmount a barrier which had grown up since they had last spoken.  It was difficult, frightening even, oddly embarrassing.  At one moment he was clear-sighted, and, at the next, confused.

“Now I’m going to begin at the beginning,” he said resolutely.  “I’m going to tell you what I ought to have told you before.  In the first place, I’ve never been in love with other women, but I’ve had other women.  Then I’ve great faults.  I’m very lazy, I’m moody—­” He persisted, in spite of her exclamation, “You’ve got to know the worst of me.  I’m lustful.  I’m overcome by a sense of futility—­incompetence.  I ought never to have asked you to marry me, I expect.  I’m a bit of a snob; I’m ambitious—­”

“Oh, our faults!” she cried.  “What do they matter?” Then she demanded, “Am I in love—­is this being in love—­are we to marry each other?”

Overcome by the charm of her voice and her presence, he exclaimed, “Oh, you’re free, Rachel.  To you, time will make no difference, or marriage or—­”

The voices of the others behind them kept floating, now farther, now nearer, and Mrs. Flushing’s laugh rose clearly by itself.

“Marriage?” Rachel repeated.

The shouts were renewed behind, warning them that they were bearing too far to the left.  Improving their course, he continued, “Yes, marriage.”  The feeling that they could not be united until she knew all about him made him again endeavour to explain.

“All that’s been bad in me, the things I’ve put up with—­the second best—­”

She murmured, considered her own life, but could not describe how it looked to her now.

“And the loneliness!” he continued.  A vision of walking with her through the streets of London came before his eyes.  “We will go for walks together,” he said.  The simplicity of the idea relieved them, and for the first time they laughed.  They would have liked had they dared to take each other by the hand, but the consciousness of eyes fixed on them from behind had not yet deserted them.

“Books, people, sights—­Mrs. Nutt, Greeley, Hutchinson,” Hewet murmured.