“Well, that’s the way that things are done!” said Maud decisively.

They left the garden, and betook themselves to the pool; the waters welled up, green and cold, from the depth, and hurried away down their bare channel.

“This is the scene of my life,” said Howard; “I will be sentimental about this!  This is where my ghost will walk, if anywhere; good heavens, to think that it was not three years ago that I came here first, and thought in a solemn way that it was going to have a strange significance for me.  ‘Significance,’ that is the mischief!  But it is all very well, now that every minute is full of happiness, to laugh at the old fears—­they were very real at the time,—­’the old wind, in the old anger’—­one can’t sit and dream, though it’s pleasant, it’s pleasant.”

“It was the only time in my life,” said Maud, “when I was ever brave!  Why isn’t one braver?  It is agreeable at the time, and it is almost overpaid!”

“It is like what a doctor told me once,” said Howard, “that he had never in his life seen a patient go to the operating table other than calm and brave.  Face to face with things one is all right; and yet one never learns not to waste time in dreading them.”

They went on in silence up the valley, Maud walking beside him with all her old lightness.  Howard thought he had never seen anything more beautiful.  They were out of the wind now, but could hear it hiss in the grasses above them.

“What about Cambridge?” said Maud.  “I think it will be rather fun.  I haven’t wanted to go; but do you know, if someone came to me and said I might just unpack everything, I should be dreadfully disappointed!”

“I believe I should be too,” said Howard.  “My only fear is that I shall not be interested—­I shall be always wanting to get back to you—­and yet how inexplicable that used to seem to me, that Dons who married should really prefer to steal back home, instead of living the free and joyous life of the sympathetic and bachelor; and even now it seems difficult to suppose that other men can feel as I do about their wives.”

“Like the boy in Punch,” said Maud, “who couldn’t believe that the two earwigs could care about each other.”

A faint music of bells came to them on the wind.  “Hark!” said Howard; “the Sherborne chime!  Do you remember when we first heard that?  It gave me a delightful sense of other people being busy when I was unoccupied.  To-day it seems as if it was warning me that I have got to be busy.”

They turned at last and retraced their steps.  Presently Howard said, “There’s just one more thing, child, I want to say.  I haven’t ever spoken to you since about the vision—­whatever it was—­which you described to me—­the child and you.  But I took you at your word!”

“Yes,” said Maud, “I have always been glad that you did that!”