If you'll just let me lean on you until I get up the hill." She put her hand through his arm; and while he walked slowly up the hill, he decided that, taken all in all, the present moment was the most embarrassing one through which he had ever lived.

The fugitive gleam, the romantic glamour, had vanished now.

He wondered what it was about her that he had at first found attractive.

It was the spirit of the place, he decided, nothing more.

With every step of the way there closed over him again his natural reserve, his unconquerable diffidence, his instinctive recoil from the eccentric in behaviour.