(new built, but somewhat on its old lines), she bade me hold the boat
while she had a good look at the landscape through the graceful arch.
Then she turned about to me and said:

"I do not know whether to be sorry or glad that this is the first
time that I have been in these reaches. It is true that it is a
great pleasure to see all this for the first time; but if I had had a
year or two of memory of it, how sweetly it would all have mingled
with my life, waking or dreaming! I am so glad Dick has been pulling
slowly, so as to linger out the time here. How do you feel about
your first visit to these waters?"

I do not suppose she meant a trap for me, but anyhow I fell into it,
and said: "My first visit! It is not my first visit by many a time.
I know these reaches well; indeed, I may say that I know every yard
of the Thames from Hammersmith to Cricklade."

I saw the complications that might follow, as her eyes fixed mine
with a curious look in them, that I had seen before at Runnymede,
when I had said something which made it difficult for others to
understand my present position amongst these people. I reddened, and
said, in order to cover my mistake: "I wonder you have never been up
so high as this, since you live on the Thames, and moreover row so
well that it would be no great labour to you. Let alone," quoth I,
insinuatingly, "that anybody would be glad to row you."

She laughed, clearly not at my compliment (as I am sure she need not
have done, since it was a very commonplace fact), but at something
which was stirring in her mind; and she still looked at me kindly,
but with the above-said keen look in her eyes, and then she said: