some time, and yesterday had been fixed for it for ages. But I have only
given three _matinées_ altogether, and I shan't give another before my
time is up.'

'That's a good hearing,' said Kendal. 'Do you get tired of the _White
Lady_?'

'Yes,' she said emphatically; 'I am sick of her. But,' she added, bending
forward with her hands clasped on her knee, so that what she said could
be heard by Kendal only; 'have you heard, I wonder, what I have in my
head for the autumn? Oh well, we must not talk of it now; I have no right
to make it public yet. But I should like to tell you when we get to
Nuneham, if there's an opportunity.'

'We will make one,' said Kendal, with an inward qualm. And she fell back
again with a nod and a smile.

On they passed, in the blazing sunshine, through Iffley lock and under
the green hill crowned with Iffley village and its Norman church. The hay
was out in the fields, and the air was full of it. Children, in tidy
Sunday frocks, ran along the towing-path to look at them; a reflected
heaven smiled upon them from the river depths; wild rose-bushes overhung
the water, and here and there stray poplars rose like land-marks into
the sky. The heat, after a time, deadened conversation. Forbes every now
and then would break out with some comment on the moving landscape, which
showed the delicacy and truth of his painter's sense, or set the boat
alive with laughter by some story of the unregenerate Oxford of his own
undergraduate days; but there were long stretches of silence when, except
to the rowers, the world seemed asleep, and the regular fall of the oars
like the pulsing of a hot dream.