“I’ve enjoyed every minute of it,” said Isabel smiling.  “Thank you, Captain Hyde, for giving me such a delightful treat!  If I weren’t sleepy I should like to begin again.”

“Oh, don’t get sleepy yet,” said Lawrence.  He pulled up the fur collar of her coat and buttoned it under her chin.  “I can’t have you catching cold, or what will Val say?  You aren’t used to driving about in evening dress and we’ve a long run before us.  And how I have been longing for it all the evening, haven’t you?  I didn’t know how to sit through that confounded play.  Yes, you can take in Selincourt and Laura but you can’t take me in.  I know you must have hated it as much as I did.  But it’s all right now.”  Sitting sideways with one knee crossed over the other, his face turned towards Isabel, without warning he put his arm round her waist.  He had determined not to ask her to marry him till he was sure of her answer, but he was sure of it now, intuitively sure of it . . . the truth being that under his impassive manner impulse was driving him along like a leaf in the wind.  “I love you, Isabel, and you love me.  Don’t deny it.”

“Don’t do that,” said Isabel:  “don’t hold me.”

“Why not? no one can see us.”

“Take your arm away.  I won’t have you hold me.  No, Captain Hyde, I will not.  I am not Mrs. Cleve.”

“Isabel!” said Lawrence, turning grey under his bronze.

“O!  I oughtn’t to have said that,” Isabel murmured.  She hid her face in her hands.  “Oh Val—­ I wish Val were here!”

“My darling,” they were among the dark streets now that border the river, and he leant forward making no effort to conceal his tenderness, “what is there you can’t say to me or I to you?  You’re so strange, my Isabel, a child one minute and a woman the next, I never know where to have you, but I love the woman more than the child, and there’s nothing on earth you need be ashamed to ask me.  Naturally you want to be sure. . . .  But there was nothing in it except that I hated leaving you, there never has been; I can’t discuss it, but there’s no tie, no—­do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then, dearest darling of the world, what are you crying for?”

“I’m not crying.”  She tried to face him, but he was too old for her, and mingling in his love she discerned indulgence, the seasoned judgment and the fixed view.  Struggling in imperfect apprehensions of life, she was not yet master of her forces—­ they came near to mastering her.  In his eyes it was natural for her to be jealous.  But she was not jealous.  That passion can hardly coexist with such sincere and cool contempt as she had felt for Mrs. Cleve.  What had pierced her heart and killed her childhood in her was terror lest Lawrence should turn out to have lowered himself to the same level.  She knew now that she loved him, and too much to care whether he was Saxon or Jew or rich or poor, but he must—­he must be