She walked on feeling annoyed and foolish. She heard him say, “She won’t have us, Job. We’re jilted!” The back of her neck burned with her cheeks, and she knew he must be able to see it under her turban and would be laughing. At the gate she turned abruptly rightward, but the wall was not high enough to hide her and she walked on stiffly, looking straight in front. The float rattled over the yard and she heard it craunch round in the lane. She was tempted to look back to make sure that it was going the other way, only she knew that Clem might still be watching. However, the sounds went fainter and she slowed to a saunter. The road went straight for a quarter mile, then disappeared to the left of some thorn bushes. She had not the least idea where it led. A hundred yards from the yard gate the wall on the right ended. She was past the house and the cabin and the hawthorns by which the boat-house was sheltered and unexpectedly she came to a wide open space and saw the lake broadspread. It was a mile long and half a mile across, and seen from there seemed to fill the valley. There was a gradual slope of coarse grass and scattered sedge tufts, then a strip of low-growing weeds of a kind that could survive periodic drownings, and finally an edge of clayey silt and stones. She walked down, drawn as a child would have been, and the nearer to the water she got the farther and wider the lake seemed to spread. A pleasant breeze was coming from the west down the length of the lake, raising little waves that splashed along the strand, tossing tiny beads of spray towards her shoes as if inviting her to play. It was so very like the sea that for a moment she imagined herself back on the coast at Aldingham, looking across Morecambe bay. The breeze blew away the hotness from her cheeks and seemed to cleanse her and she breathed in deeply, coolness spreading under her breasts, till she felt buoyant and wanted to run. She turned leftwards and started to walk briskly just out of reach of the breaking water. The sound was lifted to her; it was a gentle, friendly sounds friendly as the prattle of children. Fifty yards along the land went out in a curving sweep rightward. A brake of hawthorns, low-growing alders and bramble mounds hid her from the road, and she felt free and ran for twenty yards till she suddenly thought of Bert. Perhaps he was in the bushes somewhere. He always seemed to be somewhere near the lake. She stopped and looked round, but there was nothing, only the lapping water and the bushes and the sky. In front a ridge rose just high enough to hide everything beyond. This was the backbone of the point which formed the bay round which she was going. She went on to the tip of the point and looked into the west with the breeze, and the little waves flowing all round, as it seemed. The continual hurry of the waves gave her the impression of moving forward into them as in the prow of a boat. The sensation pleased her and she stood there five minutes, feeling pink coming into her cheeks. On her left behind the point the lake ended in a pear-shaped lagoon, three hundred yards long and at its widest part two hundred yards. Across to the opposite shore from where she stood was about one hundred and fifty yards, and she noticed what she thought was a curious thing. Far out the waves ran independently, tossing, slapping, and sometimes falling over one another, but as they approached the lagoon entrance there was an increasing orderliness; they went together inexplicably into continuous swells which moved into the opening in bow formation, each swell about two feet behind its forerunner. These swells or regular corrugations were higher than any of the individual waves farther out. The fore part of the bow passed into the lagoon first at the centre of the entrance, the ends of the swells lagging slightly along the shores. The swells had a brave look, as if they were determined to overwhelm everything, and then twenty yards within the lagoon they seemed to forget. They lost their robustness and became smaller and smaller, till forty yards past the point they were simply ripples which meekly smoothed themselves into the untroubled stillness of the far end. There Flo saw as the stalk of the lagoon pear a stream which came in between banks green with spring freshness. A quarter-mile away the little valley was shut in by a ridge grown with larches just beginning to tint, as if some of the dye of the grass had been taken up by their roots. The larches stood above the ridge against the sky, reminding Flo of pictures of the Canadian Rockies; but this was smaller, more friendly and pretty. Then she shortened her gaze to the left of the lagoon. Near where the stream came in the bank went up twenty feet or more, almost into a cliff, though all grass, topped with rough hawthorns and hollies. Flo’s gaze following the ridge hesitated all at once. There was something in the dark hollow under the cliff, something which at first she could not make out. Concentrating, she saw a man apparently sitting down, so that after all she had not been alone. She had been watched and she felt resentful; by his mere presence he had somehow spoiled the whole scene and experience. She turned, intending to walk to the road by the way that she had come. Her instinct was to ignore the stranger, but the narrowness of the point compelled her during the first twenty yards very nearly straight in his direction, and she could not close her eyes to him. He was waving, not in greeting, but signalling urgently with bent arm which he drew towards himself. She was struck by his otherwise static attitude. It seemed unnatural. On reaching the place where she should have gone down the ridge leftward out of his view she paused doubtfully. There was a slight lull in the rush of breeze, and a shout reached her, not as any particular word, but an appeal of some kind. What could he want?