The afternoon was already growing dark when the two other wayfarers, Mary and Ralph Denham, came out on the high road beyond the outskirts of Lincoln.

The high road, as they both felt, was better suited to this return journey than the open country, and for the first mile or so of the way they spoke little.

In his own mind Ralph was following the passage of the Otway carriage over the heath; he then went back to the five or ten minutes that he had spent with Katharine, and examined each word with the care that a scholar displays upon the irregularities of an ancient text.

He was determined that the glow, the romance, the atmosphere of this meeting should not paint what he must in future regard as sober facts.

On her side Mary was silent, not because her thoughts took much handling, but because her mind seemed empty of thought as her heart of feeling.