“It does seem possible!” he exclaimed, “though I’ve always thought it the most unlikely thing in the world—­I shall be in love with you all my life, and our marriage will be the most exciting thing that’s ever been done!  We’ll never have a moment’s peace—­” He caught her in his arms as she passed him, and they fought for mastery, imagining a rock, and the sea heaving beneath them.  At last she was thrown to the floor, where she lay gasping, and crying for mercy.

“I’m a mermaid!  I can swim,” she cried, “so the game’s up.”  Her dress was torn across, and peace being established, she fetched a needle and thread and began to mend the tear.

“And now,” she said, “be quiet and tell me about the world; tell me about everything that’s ever happened, and I’ll tell you—­let me see, what can I tell you?—­I’ll tell you about Miss Montgomerie and the river party.  She was left, you see, with one foot in the boat, and the other on shore.”

They had spent much time already in thus filling out for the other the course of their past lives, and the characters of their friends and relations, so that very soon Terence knew not only what Rachel’s aunts might be expected to say upon every occasion, but also how their bedrooms were furnished, and what kind of bonnets they wore.  He could sustain a conversation between Mrs. Hunt and Rachel, and carry on a tea-party including the Rev. William Johnson and Miss Macquoid, the Christian Scientists, with remarkable likeness to the truth.  But he had known many more people, and was far more highly skilled in the art of narrative than Rachel was, whose experiences were, for the most part, of a curiously childlike and humorous kind, so that it generally fell to her lot to listen and ask questions.

He told her not only what had happened, but what he had thought and felt, and sketched for her portraits which fascinated her of what other men and women might be supposed to be thinking and feeling, so that she became very anxious to go back to England, which was full of people, where she could merely stand in the streets and look at them.  According to him, too, there was an order, a pattern which made life reasonable, or if that word was foolish, made it of deep interest anyhow, for sometimes it seemed possible to understand why things happened as they did.  Nor were people so solitary and uncommunicative as she believed.  She should look for vanity—­for vanity was a common quality—­first in herself, and then in Helen, in Ridley, in St. John, they all had their share of it—­and she would find it in ten people out of every twelve she met; and once linked together by one such tie she would find them not separate and formidable, but practically indistinguishable, and she would come to love them when she found that they were like herself.

If she denied this, she must defend her belief that human beings were as various as the beasts at the Zoo, which had stripes and manes, and horns and humps; and so, wrestling over the entire list of their acquaintances, and diverging into anecdote and theory and speculation, they came to know each other.  The hours passed quickly, and seemed to them full to leaking-point.  After a night’s solitude they were always ready to begin again.