I had also seen Mrs. Luttrell, a worn and timid woman, with weak blue eyes and all the manner of the professional invalid.  I say this now, but in those days she was in my eyes a celestial being mysteriously clothed in earth’s infirmities—­as how should the mother of Claire be anything else?  Somehow I won the favour of this faded creature—­ chiefly, I suspect, because she liked so well to be left alone.  All day long she would sit contentedly watching the river and waiting for Claire, yet only anxious that Claire should be happy.  All her heart centred on her child, and often, in spite of our friendliness, I caught her glancing from Claire to me with a jealous look, as though the mother guessed what the child suspected but dimly, if at all.

So the summer slipped away, all too fleetly—­to me, as I look back after these weary years, in a day.  But nevertheless much happened:  not much that need be written down in bald and pitiless prose, but much to me who counted and treasured every moment that held my darling near me.  So the Loves through that golden season wound us round with their invisible chains and hovered smiling and waiting.  So we drifted week after week upon the river, each time nearer and nearer to the harbour of confession.  The end was surely coming, and at last it came.

It was a gorgeous August evening.  A week before she had told me that Saturday would be a holiday for her, and had, when pressed, admitted a design of spending it upon the river.  Need it be confessed that Saturday saw me also in my boat, expectant?  And when she came and feigned pretty astonishment at meeting me, and scepticism as to my doing any work throughout the week, need I say the explanation took time and seemed to me best delivered in a boat?  At any rate, so it was; and somehow, the explanation took such a vast amount of time, that the sun was already plunging down the western slope of heaven when we stepped ashore almost on the very spot where first I had heard her voice.

As the first film of evening came creeping over earth, there fell a hush between us.  A blackbird—­the same, I verily believe—­took the opportunity to welcome us.  His note was no longer full and unstudied as in May.  The summer was nearly over, and with it his voice was failing; but he did his best, and something in the hospitality of his song prompted me to break the silence.

“This is the very spot on which we met for the first time—­do you remember?”

“Of course I remember,” was the simple answer.

“You do?” I foolishly burned to hear the assurance again.

“Of course—­it was such a lovely day.”

“A blessed day,” I answered, “the most blessed of my life.”

There was a long pause here, and even the blackbird could hardly fill it up.

“Do you regret it?”

(Why does man on these occasions ask such a heap of questions?)

“Why should I?”