When, therefore, he asked her to take a walk on a certain Sunday afternoon, she agreed to do so.  There was no plotting or planning about it.  He named a familiar place of meeting and proposed to go thence to the cliffs—­a ramble that might bring them face to face with a dozen people who knew them.  She felt the happier for that.  Nor could Sally Groves and her warning cast her down for long.  The hint that Raymond was a gentleman and Sabina a spinner touched a point in their friendship long past.  The girl knew that well enough; but she also knew what Sally did not, and told herself that Raymond was a great deal more than a gentleman, just as she—­Sabina—­was something more than a spinner.  That, however, was the precious knowledge peculiar to the young people themselves.  She could not expect Sally, or anybody else, to know it yet.

As for the young man, life had cut away from him most of his former interests and amusements.  He was keeping regular hours and working steadily.  He regarded himself as a martyr, yet could get none to take that view.  To him, then, came his love affair as a very present help in time of trouble.  The emotions awakened by Sabina were real, and he fully believed that she was going to be essential to his life’s happiness and completion.  He knew nothing about women, for his athletic pursuits and ambitions to excel physically produced an indifference to them.  But with the change in his existence, and the void thereby created, came love, and he had leisure to welcome it.  He magnified Sabina, and since her intellect was as good as his own and her education better, he assured himself that she was in every respect superior to her position and worthy of any man’s admiration.

He did not analyse his feelings or look ahead very far.  He did not bother to ask himself what he wanted.  He was only concerned to make Sabina ‘a chum,’ as he said, to himself.  He knew this to be nonsense, even while he said it, but in the excitement of the quest, chose to ignore rational lines of thought.

They met by the little bridge over Bride, then walked southerly up a hill to a hamlet, and so on to the heights.  Beneath the sponge-coloured cliffs eastward swept the grand scythe of Chesil Bank; but an east wind had brought its garment of grey-blue haze and the extremity of the Bank, with Portland Bill beyond, was hidden.  The cliffs gave presently and green slopes sank to the beaches.  They reached a place where, separated from the sea by great pebble-ridges, there lay a little mere.  Two swans swam together upon it, and round about the grey stone banks were washed with silver pink, where the thrift prospered.

Sabina had not talked much, though she proved a good listener; but Raymond spoke fitfully, too, at first.  He was new to this sort of thing and told her so.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever been for a walk with a girl in my life before,” he said.

“I can’t walk fast enough for you, I’m afraid.”