Belinda, having distributed these, resumed her discourse of enthusiasm for England.  She asked a score of questions about Gloucester and Chepstow, the Severn and the Romans and the Welsh, and did not wait for the answers.  She did not want answers; she talked to keep things going.  Her talk masked a certain constraint that came upon her companions after the first morning’s greetings were over.

Sir Richmond as he had planned upstairs produced two Michelin maps.  “To-day,” he said, “we will run back to Bath—­from which it will be easy for you to train to Falmouth.  We will go by Monmouth and then turn back through the Forest of Dean, where you will get glimpses of primitive coal mines still worked by two men and a boy with a windlass and a pail.  Perhaps we will go through Cirencester.  I don’t know.  Perhaps it is better to go straight to Bath.  In the very heart of Bath you will find yourselves in just the same world you visited at Pompeii.  Bath is Pompeii overlaid by Jane Austen’s England.”

He paused for a moment.  “We can wire to your agents from here before we start and we can pick up their reply at Gloucester or Nailsworth or even Bath itself.  So that if your father is nearer than we suppose—­But I think to-morrow afternoon will be soon enough for Falmouth, anyhow.”

He stopped interrogatively.

Miss Grammont’s face was white.  “That will do very well,” she said.

Section 4.

They started, but presently they came to high banks that showed such masses of bluebells, ragged Robin, great stitchwort and the like that Belinda was not to be restrained.  She clamoured to stop the car and go up the bank and pick her hands full, and so they drew up by the roadside and Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont sat down near the car while Belinda carried her enthusiastic onslaught on the flowers up the steep bank and presently out of earshot.

The two lovers said unheeded things about the flowers to each other and then fell silent.  Then Miss Grammont turned her head and seemed deliberately to measure her companion’s distance.  Evidently she judged her out of earshot.

“Well,” said Miss Grammont in her soft even voice.  “We love one another.  Is that so still?”

“I could not love you more.”

“It wasn’t a dream?”

“No.”

“And to-morrow we part?”

He looked her in the eyes.  “I have been thinking of that all night,” he said at last.

“I too.”

“And you think—?”

“That we must part.  Just as we arranged it when was it?  Three days or three ages ago?  There is nothing else in the world to do except for us to go our ways....  I love you.  That means for a woman—­It means that I want to be with you.  But that is impossible....  Don’t doubt whether I love you because I say—­impossible....”

Sir Richmond, faced with his own nocturnal decision, was now moved to oppose it flatly.  “Nothing that one can do is impossible.”