She finished dressing, and knowing that she must show no trace of her excitement, sat quite still for several minutes, forcing herself into languor.  Then she went down.  Her husband had breakfasted and gone.  At everything she did, and every word she spoke, she was now smiling with a sort of wonder, as if she were watching a self, that she had abandoned like an old garment, perform for her amusement.  It even gave her no feeling of remorse to think she was going to do what would be so painful to the good Colonel.  He was dear to her—­but it did not matter.  She was past all that.  Nothing mattered—­nothing in the world!  It amused her to believe that her Uncle and Aunt misread her last night’s walk in the dark garden, misread her languor and serenity.  And at the first moment possible she flew out, and slipped away under cover of the yew-trees towards the river.  Passing the spot where her husband had dragged her down to him on her knees in the grass, she felt a sort of surprise that she could ever have been so terrified.  What was he?  The past—­nothing!  And she flew on.  She noted carefully the river bank opposite the tall poplar.  It would be quite easy to get down from there into a boat.  But they would not stay in that dark backwater.  They would go over to the far side into those woods from which last night the moon had risen, those woods from which the pigeons mocked her every morning, those woods so full of summer.  Coming back, no one would see her landing; for it would be pitch dark in the backwater.  And, while she hurried, she looked back across her shoulder, marking where the water, entering, ceased to be bright.  A dragon-fly brushed her cheek; she saw it vanish where the sunlight failed.  How suddenly its happy flight was quenched in that dark shade, as a candle flame blown out.  The tree growth there was too thick—­the queer stumps and snags had uncanny shapes, as of monstrous creatures, whose eyes seemed to peer out at you.  She shivered.  She had seen those monsters with their peering eyes somewhere.  Ah!  In her dream at Monte Carlo of that bull-face staring from the banks, while she drifted by, unable to cry out.  No!  The backwater was not a happy place—­they would not stay there a single minute.  And more swiftly than ever she flew on along the path.  Soon she had crossed the bridge, sent off her message, and returned.  But there were ten hours to get through before eight o’clock, and she did not hurry now.  She wanted this day of summer to herself alone, a day of dreaming till he came; this day for which all her life till now had been shaping her—­the day of love.  Fate was very wonderful!  If she had ever loved before; if she had known joy in her marriage—­she could never have been feeling what she was feeling now, what she well knew she would never feel again.  She crossed a new-mown hayfield, and finding a bank, threw herself down on her back among its uncut grasses.  Far away at the other end men were scything.