His answer was inaudible to Beauchamp; he did not quit them.

The lamp at the lodge-gates presented the young man’s face in full view, and Beauchamp thought him supremely handsome.  He perceived it to be a lady’s glove that M. d’Henriel wore at his breast.

Renee walked her horse up the park-drive, alongside the bright running water.  It seemed that she was aware of the method of provoking or reproving M. d’Henriel.  He endured some minutes of total speechlessness at this pace, and abruptly said adieu and turned back.

Renee bounded like a vessel free of her load.  ‘But why should we hurry?’ said she, and checked her course to the walk again.  ’I hope you like our Normandy, and my valley.  You used to love France, Nevil; and Normandy, they tell me, is cousin to the opposite coast of England, in climate, soil, people, it may be in manners too.  A Beauchamp never can feel that he is a foreigner in Normandy.  We claim you half French.  You have grander parks, they say.  We can give you sunlight.’

‘And it was really only the wish to see me?’ said Beauchamp.

’Only, and really.  One does not live for ever—­on earth; and it becomes a question whether friends should be shadows to one another before death.  I wrote to you because I wished to see you:  I was impatient because I am Renee.’

‘You relieve me!’

‘Evidently you have forgotten my character, Nevil.’

‘Not a feature of it.’

‘Ah!’ she breathed involuntarily.

‘Would you have me forget it?’

’When I think by myself, quite alone, yes, I would.  Otherwise how can one hope that one’s friend is friendship, supposing him to read us as we are—­minutely, accurately?  And it is in absence that we desire our friends to be friendship itself.  And . . . and I am utterly astray!  I have not dealt in this language since I last thought of writing a diary, and stared at the first line.  If I mistake not, you are fond of the picturesque.  If moonlight and water will satisfy you, look yonder.’

The moon launched her fairy silver fleets on a double sweep of the little river round an island of reeds and two tall poplars.

‘I have wondered whether I should ever see you looking at that scene,’ said Renee.

He looked from it to her, and asked if Roland was well, and her father; then alluded to her husband; but the unlettering elusive moon, bright only in the extension of her beams, would not tell him what story this face, once heaven to him, wore imprinted on it.  Her smile upon a parted mouth struck him as two-edged in replying:  ’I have good news to give you of them all:  Roland is in garrison at Rouen, and will come when I telegraph.  My father is in Touraine, and greets you affectionately; he hopes to come.  They are both perfectly happy.  My husband is travelling.’

Beauchamp was conscious of some bitter taste; unaware of what it was, though it led him to say, undesigningly:  ’How very handsome that M. d’Henriel is!—­if I have his name correctly.’