Down below was
a man in waders with a fishing-rod going to and fro along the foaming
weir, and a couple of boys paddled a boat against the rush of the water
lower down the stream.
"Dear England!" said Miss Grammont, surveying this gracious spectacle.
"How full it is of homely and lovely and kindly things!"
"It is the home we come from."
"You belong to it still."
"No more than you do. I belong to a big overworking modern place called
London which stretches its tentacles all over the world. I am as much a
home-coming tourist as you are. Most of this western country I am seeing
for the first time."
She said nothing for a space. "I've not a word to say to-night," she
said. "I'm just full of a sort of animal satisfaction in being close to
you.... And in being with you among lovely things.... Somewhere--Before
we part to-night--...."
"Yes?" he said to her pause, and his face came very near to hers.
"I want you to kiss me."
"Yes," he said awkwardly, glancing over his shoulder, acutely aware of
the promenaders passing close to them.
"It's a promise?"
"Yes."
Very timidly and guiltily his hand sought hers beside it and gripped it
and pressed it. "My dear!" he whispered, tritest and most unavoidable
of expressions. It was not very like Man and Woman loving upon their
Planet; it was much more like the shy endearments of the shop boys and
work girls who made the darkling populous about them with their silent
interchanges.
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