Blanche, too, was slipping into something like love these days; the beauty of their surroundings and something simple and primitive in the boy himself both made the same appeal to her.  Was it possible that after all her flirtations, all her insincerities, she should capture the birthright of the single-hearted?  It seemed so, for Blanche had this much of grace left—­she was responsive to simplicity.  There was something more than the instinct of the coquette in the fullness with which she gave him all he asked, step by step; she had thrown away calculation and was letting herself be guided by her own instinct and the finer instinct she felt to be in him.  Each demand his moods made on her she met, each thing his reverent hand unconsciously asked of hers as he helped her over the rough places, each expression his eyes looked for in hers—­she gave them all.  For here was that rarest of rare things, a man to whom all could be given without his prizing less highly gift or giver.

Long after she had gone to bed he would walk the fields and make sweet picture-plans, all centred tenderly round her.  He would stand and look up at her window when the light in it was out, picturing the room, the freshness, the delightful girlishness of it, and at this intimacy of thought he would redden in the dark.  His sense of humour was in abeyance, and the reality, could he have seen it, would have been a shock to him—­the dressing-table a litter of cosmetics and pin-curls; and on the pillow the face of Blanche surrounded by wavers and shiny with cold-cream.

On this golden morning Ishmael found Blanche, as she had meant him to, in the garden at Paradise, the sun turning her ashen hair to fire.

“Don’t let’s waste a minute of to-day,” he said.  “We’ll have the cart out and not come back till the evening—­that is, if you care about it?”

“Of course I care about it,” she told him, and ran upstairs to pin on a shady hat and powder her face.

“Shall I speak now?  Shall I speak now?” thought Ishmael as he drove down the lane; but with a thrill of anticipation came “No—­my hands aren’t free.”  For Mrs. Penticost’s cob, a nervous, spirited creature, newly broken in, was between the shafts.

“Will he speak yet?” thought Blanche; “and if he does, what shall I say?” She glanced up at the set, earnest face, and, sensitive to her look, his eyes met hers.  He averted his gaze quickly, but his heart sang, “She cares! she cares!” And quite suddenly he felt he wished to postpone speaking as long as possible, that the savour of this suspended bliss was too sweet to lose.  A tremor ran through Blanche as their eyes met.  She recognised that in him was an austerity against which even she could beat in vain.