In the village, having posted her letter, she turned towards a lane that led to the Riverside Road.  Max, unaware of her reason for choosing the longest way home, remonstrated by halting in the middle of the lane, wagging his tail rapidly, and uttering gruff barks.

“Don’t be stupid, sir,” said Gertrude impatiently.  “I am going this way.”

Max, apparently understanding, rushed after her, passed her, and disappeared in a cloud of dust raised by his effort to check himself when he had left her far enough behind.  When he came back she kissed his nose, and ran a race with him until she too was panting, and had to stand still to recover her breath, whilst he bounded about, barking ferociously.  She had not for many years enjoyed such a frolic, and the thought of this presently brought tears to her eyes.  Rather peevishly she bade Max be quiet, walked slowly to cool herself, and put up her sunshade to avert freckles.

The sun was now at the meridian.  On a slope to Gertrude’s right hand, Sallust’s House, with its cinnamon-colored walls and yellow frieze, gave a foreign air to the otherwise very English landscape.  She passed by without remembering who lived there.  Further down, on some waste land separated from the road by a dry ditch and a low mud wall, a cluster of hemlocks, nearly six feet high, poisoned the air with their odor.  She crossed the ditch, took a pair of gardening gloves from her plaited straw hand-basket, and busied herself with the hemlock leaves, pulling the tender ones, separating them from the stalk, and filling the basket with the web.  She forgot Max until an impression of dead silence, as if the earth had stopped, caused her to look round in vague dread.  Trefusis, with his hand abandoned to the dog, who was trying how much of it he could cram into his mouth, was standing within a few yards of her, watching her intently.  Gertrude turned pale, and came out hastily from among the bushes.  Then she had a strange sensation as if something had happened high above her head.  There was a threatening growl, a commanding exclamation, and an unaccountable pause, at the expiration of which she found herself supine on the sward, with her parasol between her eyes and the sun.  A sudden scoop of Max’s wet warm tongue in her right ear startled her into activity.  She sat up, and saw Trefusis on his knees at her side holding the parasol with an unconcerned expression, whilst Max was snuffing at her in restless anxiety opposite.

“I must go home,” she said.  “I must go home instantly.”

“Not at all,” said Trefusis, soothingly.  “They have just sent word to say that everything is settled satisfactorily and that you need not come.”

“Have they?” she said faintly.  Then she lay down again, and it seemed to her that a very long time elapsed.  Suddenly recollecting that Trefusis had supported her gently with his hand to prevent her falling back too rudely, she rose again, and this time got upon her feet with his help.