Rawson-Clew walked on ahead of the pair; he had to outpace them, since he was bound the same way, and could not walk with them.  He was not sure that he was not rather sorry for Denah, the Dutch girl; one who can laugh at herself as well as another, and all alone, too, is he thought, rather apt to enjoy the incongruous more than the suitable.

CHAPTER VII

HOW JULIA DID NOT GET THE BLUE DAFFODIL

Vrouw Van Heigen was learning a new crochet pattern; one did it in thread of a Sevres blue shade; when several long strips were made, one sewed them together with pieces of black satin between each two, and there was an antimacassar of severe but rich beauty.  Denah explained all this as she set Mevrouw to work on the pattern; it was very intricate, quite exciting, because it was so difficult; the more excited the old lady became the more mistakes she made, but it did not matter; Denah was patience itself, and did not seem to mind how much time she gave.  She came every day after dinner (that is to say, about six o’clock), and when she came it was frequently found necessary that Julia should go to inquire after the invalid cousin.  Denah thought herself the deepest and most diplomatic young woman in Holland; she even found it in her heart to pity Julia, the poor companion, who she used as a pawn in her romance.  The which, since it was transparently obvious to the pawn, gave her vast, though private, delight.

So Julia went almost daily down the long flat road to the village, and very often Rawson-Clew had to go that way too; and when he did, his time of going being of necessity much the same time as hers, he was almost bound to walk with her.  There was but one way to the place; they must either walk together in the middle of the road, or else separately, one side of it; and seeing that they were of the same nationality, in a foreign land, and had some previous acquaintance, it would have been nothing short of absurd to have done the latter.  So as often as they met they walked together and talked of many things, and in the course of time Rawson-Clew came to find Julia’s company a good deal more entertaining than his own; although she had read nothing she ought to have read, seen nothing she ought to have seen, and occasionally both thought and said things she certainly ought not, and was not even conventionally unconventional.

They usually parted at the footpath, which shortened her way a little, Rawson-Clew giving her the basket there, and going down the road alone; in consequence of this it was some time before she knew for certain where it was he went, although she had early guessed.  But one damp evening she departed from her usual custom.  It had been raining heavily all day, and although it had cleared now, a thick mist lay over the wet fields.

“I shall have to go round by the road,” she said, as she looked at the track.