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.
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