She looked at him very straight now, with the eager, level stare of an interested child.

“A heron’s,” she answered. And then, as if for the mere pleasure of repeating the word: “A heron’s, Wolf. I found it just exactly a year ago⁠ ⁠… two months before I first saw you. I was walking by myself in those Lunt meadows that you see from the lower road to King’s Barton. You know where I mean? I was walking by myself along the riverbank.”

Wolf continued to listen intently to every word, as the girl went on with her story; but even as he listened, his mind was still struggling with the shock of finding himself so shamefully possessive as to dislike the idea of her encountering any sort of amorousness where it was disassociated from himself. “I really am scandalous,” he thought. “I’d like her to be virginal in mind, body, soul, spirit, intellect, nerves, humour!”