“Yes,” said Flo. She hesitated before starting to walk across the remainder of the flat. Then there was a bank. From the top she looked back. Dick Goldbourn had not moved. He waved and impelled her to wave an answer. She wondered if he had always been like that and felt sorry for him. There was just the suggestion of a path in front. It took her up the shallow valley by the stream that was the stalk of the lagoon. Fifty yards from the head of the lagoon there were alders and willows by the water and the path went to a narrow wooden bridge beneath them. Bending rightward the path then led back towards the lake, but took her a good stone-throw away from the stream and higher up, and here, surprisingly, she found a second stream, clearer, quicker-flowing, man-guided, though the banks had long ago become grown with grass and flowering plants, thorn bushes and occasional goat willows, ash trees and small oaks. This stream’s remaining mark of artificiality was its straightness. Flo did not bother trying to think why it had been made, because there was a sudden circled disturbance of the surface and the skimming away of a shadow which she guessed must be a fish. Although she peered hard under the far bank where it seemed to have gone, all that she saw was a little flurry of fine particles start up and float away. She wondered if it was the kind offish that Mr. Goldbourn would have liked to have caught. She looked round. There he was half a mile distant close by the lake edge, resting as it seemed. Realizing that she was still in his view should he glance round, she went on more quickly to the wood’s shelter. The clear stream ran into the wood under a thick ash bough, recently barked and creamy white. The stile was high and let Flo down behind a family of old hollies, all grown together as with arms and cloaks round one another. Here the path was a narrow causeway between spinney leaves and the water. She sidled past, her back to the hollies, and noticed how the water, overarched also by alder trees from the far side, seemed to run more gently, as if it had grown older all at once. Shadow had taken away the surface gloss so that she could see every grey and brown and black pebble, and every stick and rooting of moss or weed as if she were looking through a magnifying glass. Beyond the hollies stream and path went companionably down a long clear corridor interlaced above, and at the sides shut in by ivied oak trunks and thorn bushes, by hazel and wild rose shoots tied with dead-looking honeysuckle binders which nevertheless had started proud little sage-green leaf tufts at hand-span intervals all along their length. On the right by the edge of the path the ground fell steeply, and Flo saw through boughs and twigs the gleam of the lake. Behind an ivy-muffled oak trunk she stopped. Dick Goldbourn was moving on. He seemed absorbed in picking a track, and went on slowly as if the obstructions to the wheels were many. Flo felt contrite at not having stayed. She left the path, scrambling down the bank, and went to the edge of the bushes. The water lay only five feet from them. There was a sense of intimacy in watching him across its surface, for she was by the top end of the lagoon where the swell was down to little more than a suggestion of shadows following one another. Though she could hear the wind, it was only a faint soughing at the back of the wood behind her, and she imagined that without raising her voice she could have spoken across to him. She forgot regret in trying to remember all that had happened. More than anything she had been impressed by his quiet courtesy. “A real gentleman,” she summed him up.
He was wheeling carefully up the land that dwindled to the point where she had stood. He was taking the rise diagonally and half-way up changed direction, unexpectedly facing partly to her. She stepped back flustered, and wrongly imagined the shelter of the hastily accepted thorn bush to be very slight. He paused and seemed to gaze straight at her. She wondered at her foolishness in coming so near the edge. While she hesitated between stopping there or making a dash for the oak he began to labour again and rolled slowly up the bank on his new tack. Then he was at the top, and she saw him coast from view. Nevertheless she stayed on, knowing that he must show again as he travelled to the road. Only when he was safely on the macadam did she climb back to the path. He was still in her thoughts when she reached the dam at the foot of the lake.