However, she was seized with shyness, and as she had now finished the packing of her brushes and paints, and the young man had elaborately fastened all the straps of the portable easel and its case, there was nothing for him to do but to stoop unwillingly for his soft hat which was lying on the grass.  Then an idea struck him.

“I say, what are you going to do with all these things?”

“Carry them home.”  She smiled.  “I am not a cripple.”

“Mightn’t I—­mightn’t I carry them for you?”

“Thank you.  My way lies in quite another direction.  Good-night.”

She held out a shapely hand.  He took it, lifted his hat, and departed.

As soon as he was safely past a jutting corner of the road Lydia, instead of going home, lazily sat down again on a rock to think about what had happened.  She was perfectly aware that—­considering the whole interview had only taken ten minutes—­she had made an impression upon the young man.  And as young men of such distinguished appearance were not common in the Whitebeck neighbourhood, the recollection of all those little signs in look and manner which had borne witness to the stranger’s discreet admiration of her was not at all disagreeable.

He was not a native—­that she was sure of.  She guessed him a Londoner.  “Awfully good clothes!—­London clothes.  About thirty, I should think?  I wonder what he does.  He can’t be rich, or he wouldn’t be bicycling.  He did up those straps as though he were used to them; but he can’t be an artist, or he’d have said something.  It was a face with lots of power in it.  Not very good-tempered, I should say?  But there’s something about him—­yes, distinctly, something!  I liked his thin cheeks, and his dark curls.  His head, too, was uncommonly well set on.  I’m sure that there’s a good deal to him, as the Americans say; he’s not stuffed with sawdust.  I can imagine—­just imagine—­being in love with him.”

She laughed to herself.

Then a sudden thought occurred to her, which reddened her cheeks.  Suppose when the young man came to think over it, he believed that she had let the papers fall into the river—­deliberately—­on purpose—­just to attract his attention?  At the very precise moment that he comes upon the scene, she slips into the water.  Of course!—­an arranged affair!

She sat on, meditating in some discomfort.

“It is no use deceiving ourselves,” she thought.  “We’re not in the good old Tennysonian days.  There’s precious little chivalry now!  Men don’t idealize women as they used.  They’re grown far more suspicious—­and harder.  Perhaps because women have grown so critical of them!  Anyway something’s gone—­what is it?  Poetry?  Illusion?  And yet!—­why is it that men still put us off our balance?—­even now—­that they matter so much less, now that we live our own lives, and can do without them?  I shouldn’t be sitting here, bothering my head, if it had been another girl who had come to help.”