Summerhay’s love had no such divided consciousness.  About her past, too, he dismissed speculation.  He remembered having heard in the hunting-field that she was Winton’s natural daughter; even then it had made him long to punch the head of that covertside scandal-monger.  The more there might be against the desirability of loving her, the more he would love her; even her wretched marriage only affected him in so far as it affected her happiness.  It did not matter—­nothing mattered except to see her and be with her as much as she would let him.  And now she was going to the sea for a month, and he himself—­curse it!—­was due in Perthshire to shoot grouse.  A month!

He walked slowly along the river.  Dared he speak?  At times, her face was like a child’s when it expects some harsh or frightening word.  One could not hurt her—­impossible!  But, at times, he had almost thought she would like him to speak.  Once or twice he had caught a slow soft glance—­gone the moment he had sight of it.

He was before his time, and, leaning on the river parapet, watched the tide run down.  The sun shone on the water, brightening its yellowish swirl, and little black eddies—­the same water that had flowed along under the willows past Eynsham, past Oxford, under the church at Clifton, past Moulsford, past Sonning.  And he thought:  ’My God!  To have her to myself one day on the river—­one whole long day!’ Why had he been so pusillanimous all this time?  He passed his hand over his face.  Broad faces do not easily grow thin, but his felt thin to him, and this gave him a kind of morbid satisfaction.  If she knew how he was longing, how he suffered!  He turned away, toward Whitehall.  Two men he knew stopped to bandy a jest.  One of them was just married.  They, too, were off to Scotland for the twelfth.  Pah!  How stale and flat seemed that which till then had been the acme of the whole year to him!  Ah, but if he had been going to Scotland with her!  He drew his breath in with a sigh that nearly removed the Home Office.

Oblivious of the gorgeous sentries at the Horse Guards, oblivious of all beauty, he passed irresolute along the water, making for their usual seat; already, in fancy, he was sitting there, prodding at the gravel, a nervous twittering in his heart, and that eternal question:  Dare I speak? asking itself within him.  And suddenly he saw that she was before him, sitting there already.  His heart gave a jump.  No more craning—­he would speak!

She was wearing a maize-coloured muslin to which the sunlight gave a sort of transparency, and sat, leaning back, her knees crossed, one hand resting on the knob of her furled sunshade, her face half hidden by her shady hat.  Summerhay clenched his teeth, and went straight up to her.

“Gyp!  No, I won’t call you anything else.  This can’t go on!  You know it can’t.  You know I worship you!  If you can’t love me, I’ve got to break away.  All day, all night, I think and dream of nothing but you.  Gyp, do you want me to go?”