TWO:One evening Arthur Withers and Rose Lomas sat together on their favourite stile talking in low whispers. The summer dusk lagged, and the air about them was so still that between their softly spoken words they could hear the talk of innumerable insects in the grass at their feet. There had been few interruptions. So familiar had their figures become in that position, that it had grown to be almost a tradition among the people who passed that way during the evening to cross the stile without disturbing the lovers. There are ways, too, of sitting upon a stile without incommoding the casual pedestrian.On this particular Sunday morning, he had not gone to Cathedral service at all, but after his wife and Alice had set forth in the victoria to St Thomas��s, had walked out westwards along the road from The Cedars, to where half a mile away the last house was left behind and the billowing downs rolled away in open sea out of sight of the land of houses. In the main it was the sense of spring with its intimate stirrings that called him out, and the adventure was a remarkable one, for it was years since he had failed to attend Sunday morning service. But to-day he sought no stern omnipotent Presence, which his religion told him must be invoked among arches and altars: he{231} sought maybe the same, under the guise of a smiling face, in windy temples. It was not that he consciously sought it: as far as any formulated expression went, he would have said that he ��chose�� to go for a walk in the country, and would attend Cathedral service in the evening as usual. But as he walked he wondered whether Norah would come to The Cedars that morning to work in his library. He had not the slightest intention, however reserved and veiled from himself, of going back there to see; he meant to walk until his wife and daughter would certainly be back from church again, though probably this was among the last two or three mornings that Norah would come to The Cedars at all, for the catalogue was on the point of completion.