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On the last Sunday before the Lugard family returned, Keir asked Sybil to spend it with him. She possessed a bicycle, and he suggested that they should start very early and camp out for the day on the hills above Shere. Had she seen the Silent Pool? No. And could she ride forty miles a day with a long rest between the outward and the homeward journeys?

“Oh, yes—but I ought to ask cook.”

“Why?”

“She’s in charge. And it’s her Sunday. She might change with me.”

The cook said that she would like to have a few words with Keir, and she had them and was satisfied. She was ready to give up the day to Sybil, and on the morning of that particular Sunday Sybil woke at five and ran to her window, for she had been terribly afraid of the day turning out badly, but she saw the Darvels garden lying still and secret in the haze of a perfect dawn. Her brown eyes were tender. Her impulse towards loving and being loved was like wind upon water, an innocent yet passionate urge. She was more consciously in love with Keir than he was with her, but the day was to prove Keir human.

They started soon after eight. Keir had gone shopping the night before, and had a special picnic basket on the luggage-carrier, and much of its contents owed nothing to Mrs. Marter. Both of them took mackintoshes, Sybil’s a blue one. She was wearing a light blue frock and a little black hat. Keir rode on the off side between her and any passing traffic, and by ten o’clock they had dismounted and were climbing the long hill to Newlands Corner.

Keir wheeled both machines.

“Tired?”

No, she wasn’t tired, but the day was a day of summer heat, and Sybil found a blue handkerchief and arranged it under her hat.

“The sun’s so hot on my neck.”

She laughed over it. She had a pretty neck, creamy and soft, and she had let her hair grow.

“We’ll find plenty of shade up there.”

Their mutual urge was to get away from the crowd, and when they came to the grassy spaces and the shadowy woods and thickets of the downs, they seemed to draw more close to each other. Sybil took charge of her own machine. They found themselves holding hands.

Her face grew dreamy.

“Oh, isn’t it lovely, Keir?”

He looked at her with the eyes of a lover.

“Yes, it’s just made for you.”

She gave a little laugh, and her cheek seemed to approach his shoulder. She was not afraid of him now.

“Let’s find a wild place all to ourselves.”

There was a kind of happy wildness in her eyes.

They found their sanctuary, a grassy hollow close to some beech trees and sheltered by thorns, and they parked their bicycles against a tree and unpacked. The day was still young, so they spread their mackintoshes on the turf and sat down close together, and suddenly Keir was shy. He had become acutely conscious of the exquisite strangeness of this girl, of her slim hands and dark eyes and poignant mouth and of that fragrant, creamy skin. He was in love with her, and all of her was wonderful.

He said: “What small hands you’ve got, kid!”

She hid them for a moment under her knees.

“They get so rough.”

“Nonsense. Let’s see.”

She allowed him to take one of her hands and to reassure her. She had spent half an hour manicuring her hands the night before.

“Like pink shells, your nails.”

She looked confused and happy.

For there was a gentle seductiveness about Sybil, and all through the sunlight and the shadow and the sleepy heat of that summer day her youth and its wonder grew upon Keir. They ate their lunch, and there were cherries and jam tarts. The lemonade was rather rebellious, and it made them laugh. Sybil confessed that she felt sleepy, and actually she fell asleep with Keir’s jacket rolled up under her head. He sat and dreamed and watched her, and felt the desire of her stirring in his blood. How very innocent she looked! The soft shadows of those long, dark lashes!

And suddenly she was awake. She sat up with an air of confusion and shook her hair.

“Haven’t you been asleep too?”

“No.”

He had been watching her, and she knew it.

Later they left their bicycles hidden in a thicket and went down that steep yew-shaded tunnel to the Silent Pool. The water had a tinge of blue in it, and fish were swimming. The sunlight hung in the tree-tops, but there were too many people here, and the pool had lost its silence. They clambered along the little steep paths where the wild box trees were fragrant in the summer heat. They looked at the water and the fish.

But they could not hold hands here or let their bodies touch, for their mutual sensitiveness was confused by the crowd. Children were chasing each other and shouting. Two small boys were searching for stones to throw at the fish.

“Look at that big un, Bert.”

“Slosh him.”

There was a sudden almost irritable fierceness in Keir’s eyes.

“Why can’t people teach their damned kids—”

She looked poignant. Quickly compassionate and suddenly courageous, she went and spoke to the boys.

“You mustn’t throw stones at the fish.”

The boys scorned her.

“Don’t you take no notice of her, Bert. She can’t do nothing to you.”

Keir rescued her from the impasse, slipping a hand under her arm.

“Let’s get away, Sybil. I might feel like chucking one of those kids into the water.”

They wandered away, returning to the steep hillside and the shadows of the yews, and the wilderness was theirs once more.

Keir had brought a thermos with him and a couple of cups, and they spread themselves again in that green nook among the thorn trees. They could hear the Sunday traffic passing in the valley along the Guildford-Dorking road, but on this wooded bluff they felt themselves far from the world. Now and again they heard the voices and the laughter of people passing along the Pilgrims’ Way, but no other lovers disturbed them. Keir found a packet of cigarettes and offered Sybil one.

“I’ve never smoked.”

“Never!”

She nodded at him. It was true.

“Well—I shouldn’t begin now. Believe you feel sleepy again, kid?”

“No, just dreamy.”

He rolled up his coat and put it under her head, and as he did so, he realized that he had not kissed her yet. He wanted to kiss her, but he was afraid, most strangely afraid of the mystery of her beauty. Keir had read his war books, and he knew that in them sex could not be accused of a sensitive diffidence. In them love did not look and marvel and hold back, but sprang like an animal upon its prey. Yet his feeling towards Sybil was tinged with compassion, a tenderness that was ever present when beauty moved him.

He sat staring at the greenness of one of the thorn trees, his arms clasping his knees.

“You do look serious, Keir.”

Her eyes were half-closed. The soft, virginal curves of her breasts showed as she lay. One black leg was crossed over the other.

“I—am—serious, kid.”

She put out a hand, palm upwards, and suddenly he turned and, bending, put his lips into the hollow of that hand.

“Oh—Keir.”

Her other hand touched his head. Her face was a blur of soft desire. She was far less complex than he was.

He knelt and looked at her, and she smiled at him, and her arms seemed to open.

“Keir—”

They lay close, face to face, and body to body. He felt the soft pressure of her breasts. She clung to him exquisitely.

“Oh, Keir—”