For
Gyp, it had never lost the magic of their first afternoon upon it--never
lost its glamour as of an enchanted world. All the week she looked
forward to these hours of isolation with him, as if the surrounding
water secured her not only against a world that would take him from her,
if it could, but against that side of his nature, which, so long ago she
had named "old Georgian." She had once adventured to the law courts by
herself, to see him in his wig and gown. Under that stiff grey crescent
on his broad forehead, he seemed so hard and clever--so of a world to
which she never could belong, so of a piece with the brilliant bullying
of the whole proceeding. She had come away feeling that she only
possessed and knew one side of him. On the river, she had that side
utterly--her lovable, lazy, impudently loving boy, lying with his head
in her lap, plunging in for a swim, splashing round her; or with his
sleeves rolled up, his neck bare, and a smile on his face, plying his
slow sculls down-stream, singing, "Away, my rolling river," or puffing
home like a demon in want of his dinner. It was such a blessing to lose
for a few hours each week this growing consciousness that she could
never have the whole of him. But all the time the patch of silence grew,
for doubt in the heart of one lover reacts on the heart of the other.
When the long vacation came, she made an heroic resolve.
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