Neither she nor Wolf moved a muscle in response to this attack; and Lobbie wandered slowly off till he was lost to sight. Then the girl got up and began shaking her skirt. The cream-coloured cloak hung loose and open, and Wolf saw that she was dressed in an old, tight-fitting, olive-green frock.

When she had finished brushing the puffball-powder from her clothes, she took off her hat and laid it carefully, absentmindedly, upon the tree-trunk by his side.

He instantaneously threw his arms round her and held her lightly against him, while in the silence between them he felt his heart beating like an invisible underground water-pump.

But she unloosed his hands with deft, cool fingers. “Not now,” she said. “Let’s talk now.”

In some mysterious way he was grateful to her for this. The last thing he wanted was to spoil the strange, lovely solemnity that had fallen upon them like the falling of slow, thin, noiseless rain.