The rain held off, and after breakfast—­a cheery meal at which Bernard for the first time for many months appeared dressed and in a good temper—­Lawrence fulfilled the main duty of a guest by going for a walk.

He came by footbridge and field path into the High Street, where he was immediately buttonholed by the vicar.  Lawrence had a fixed idea that all priests were hypocrites:  they must be, since as educated men they could not well believe the fables they were paid to teach!  But it was hard to associate hypocrisy with Mr. Stafford, whose fond ambition it was to nail Lawrence Hyde to lecture on his Chinese travels before the Bible Class.  “Oh, nothing religious,” he explained, holding his victim firmly by the coat as Lawrence edged away.  “Only half an hour’s story-telling to put a few new ideas into their heads—­as if you were talking to a young brother of your own.  I’m always trying to get them to emigrate, but they need a great deal of shoving.”  Lawrence said they could not emigrate to China, and, further, that he didn’t regard them as brothers.  “How narrow you are, some of you University men!” sighed Mr. Stafford.  “What a concept of society!  But,” brightening, “you’re not so bad as you’re painted.  Come, come! a fifth-of-August recruit can’t very well deny that we’re all brothers in arms?” Before Lawrence escaped he was not sure that he hadn’t pledged himself to an address on “Fringes of the Empire,” with special reference to the C.U.M.C.A.

It was too sunny to fish, but the trout lured him, and from the cross-roads by the stone bridge he struck into a footpath that led upstream into the hills, behind whose green spurs Chilmark before long was out of sight.  Here it was lonely country.  Sometimes on a headland the sun flashed white over a knot of labourers, scything the hay where no machine could go:  sometimes a shepherd’s cote gleamed far off above the pale wattlings of a fold:  but as he wound on—­and on into the Plain there was no sign of man in all the hot landscape, and no motion but the bicker of the stream over its stony bed, and the hum of insect life busy on its millions of dark and tiny vibrant wings.  Not a breath of wind stirred among these grassy valleys, and Lawrence, feeling warm, had sat down by a pool under a sapling birchtree, when he heard a step on the path.  It was Isabel Stafford.

He had hardly seen her again overnight, for Val had carried his young sister away before ten o’clock.  He waited for her in the rare shadow of the birchtree, a tall powerful figure in a white drill suit of the tropics, his fair skin and black eyes shaded by a wide Panama hat.  Isabel as she drew near was vexed to find herself blushing.  She was a little shy of Captain Hyde, a little averse to meet his sparkling eyes.

“Isn’t it hot?” she said, frankly wiping her face with a large handkerchief.  “This is a favourite pool of mine, I often sit here when I come this way.  I never saw such beautiful dragonflies, did you?  They must be nearly as big as hummingbirds.”