He wandered or rushed along them all for a space, and came back.

One of them was short and ended in the lake.

All through that long and beautiful day this miserable man found himself coming back to the road that ended in the lake.
There were moments when he cried to himself that it was an apparition he had seen and heard.

He had avoided his friends all day; of the English-speaking people in St.Gian one only knew why he was distraught, and she was the last he wished to speak to; but more than once he nearly sought her to say, "Partner in my shame, what did you see?
what did you hear ?" In the afternoon he had a letter from Elspeth telling him how she was enjoying her holiday by the sea, and mentioning that David was at that moment writing to Grizel in Thrums.
But was it, then, all a dream?
he cried, nearly convinced for the first time, and he went into the arbour saying determinedly that it was a dream; and in the arbour, standing primly in a corner, was Grizel's umbrella.

He knew that umbrella so well! He remembered once being by while she replaced one of its ribs so deftly that he seemed to be looking on at a surgical operation.