“Some of the men were very kind to me,” he said.  “I had supper with Noel Bridges, amongst others.”

“Well?” she asked, almost defiantly.

“I don’t understand.”

She looked intently at him for a moment.

“I forgot,” she went on.  “You are very chivalrous, aren’t you?  You wouldn’t ask questions....  See, I am going to close my eyes.  It is too horrible here, and all through Brooklyn.  When we are in the lanes I can talk.  This is just one of those days I wish that we were in England.  All our country is either suburban or too wild and restless.  Can you be content with silence for a little time?”

“Of course,” he assured her.  “Besides, you forget that I am in a strange country.  Everything is worth watching.”

They passed over Brooklyn Bridge, and for an hour or more they made slow progress through the wide-flung environs of the city.  At last, however, the endless succession of factories and small tenement dwellings lay behind them.  They passed houses with real gardens, through stretches of wood whose leaves were opening, whose branches were filled with the sweet-smelling sap of springtime.  Elizabeth seemed to wake almost automatically from a kind of stupor.  She pushed back her veil, and Philip, stealing eager glances towards her, was almost startled by some indefinable change.  Her face seemed more delicate, almost the face of an invalid, and she lay back there with half-closed eyes.  The strength of her mouth seemed to have dissolved, and its sweetness had become almost pathetic.  There were signs of a great weariness about her.  The fingers which reached out for the little speaking-tube seemed to have become thinner.

“Take the turn to the left, John,” she instructed, “the one to Bay Shore.  Go slowly by the lake and stop where I tell you.”

They left the main road and travelled for some distance along a lane which, with its bramble-grown fences and meadows beyond, was curiously reminiscent of England.  They passed a country house, built of the wood which was still a little unfamiliar to Philip, but wonderfully homelike with its cluster of outbuildings, its trim lawns, and the turret clock over the stable entrance.  Then, through the leaves of an avenue of elms, they caught occasional glimpses of the blue waters of the lake, which they presently skirted.  Elizabeth’s eyes travelled over its placid surface idly, yet with a sense of passive satisfaction.  In a few minutes they passed into the heart of a little wood, and she leaned forward.

“Stop here, close to the side of the road, John.  Stop your engine, please, and go and sit by the lake.”