“Do you realize,” he said, “that two seconds before I saw you I thought suddenly of your father? That shows something, doesn’t it?”

“I’ve been thinking of him, and of you too, Wolf, all the afternoon. When he told me you were watching that game of bowls, I said to myself in a flash, ‘I’ll go out and meet Wolf coming back!’⁠—and you see I did meet you.”

She spoke with a wavering happiness that seemed to be lifting the syllables of her voice up and down on the darkness as the undulations of a full-brimmed tide might lift a drifting boat.

“Let’s find a place to sit down for a minute,” said Wolf. “I can’t realize I’ve got you, when we’re just standing up like this.”

He tightened his clasp upon her hand and led her to the hedge. A mass of vague, dark umbrageousness confronted them.

“Stop!” he whispered, “while I see if there’s a ditch.”