"Vanity, vanity!" he said, taking her in his arms and kissing her. Gabrielle suddenly thought how glad she would be to hand him over to the admiring Lady Barbara. She remembered the chill kiss of her cousin, and then the kiss of Considine. Neither of them, she decided, was a real kiss.
The new term began on the twenty-fifth of January. Gabrielle had awaited it with a subdued excitement. When the day came, she compelled herself to appear more placid than usual. It was a sunny morning of the kind that often gives a feeling of spring to the Devon winter, a morning full of promise. Considine had suggested that she should drive into Totnes and do some shopping before meeting the train from the Midlands, but she would not do so. All morning she made herself busy in the house, and later in the day, hearing the wheels of the wagonette on the drive, she slipped out into the garden to visit a border where the crocus spears were pushing through the soil. She could not explain her own sudden shyness. She was tremulous, tremulous with life. There was a smell of spring in the air. Arthur came out to find her in the garden. His eyes glowed with the pleasure of seeing her again, but she would not look at him.
"Oh, it was all right," he said. "I think it was all right. I'm almost sure of it. I always thought of you, you see. Imagined what you'd think of me." He didn't say that he had considered what his mother would think. She was suddenly, jealously, thankful.
With his return she regained her content, feeling no longer the weight of winter. He spoke no more regretfully of his exclusion from the sports of the other pupils and they settled down once again into their happy routine of walks and drives. In a little while the crocuses burst into flame in the borders, and in the hedges the wild arums began to unfold.
One Friday afternoon in the middle of March she asked Considine to let Arthur drive her into Dartmouth. The day was so mild that they chose the high-road that skirts the edge of Start Bay. There was a feeling of holiday in the air, for the sea beneath them was of a pale and shimmering blue like a stone blazing with imprisoned light or a butterfly's wing. On the road they met a long procession of carriers' vans heaped high with shopping baskets, and the happy faces of country people stared at them from under the hoods. The road shone white, having been scoured with rain, and all the hedgerows smelt of green things growing, with now and then a waft of the white violet. The sky was so clear that they could see the smoke of many liners, hull down, making the Start. When they reached the crest of the hill above Dartmouth a man-of-war appeared, a three-funnelled cruiser, steaming fast towards the land. She was so fleet and strong that she seemed to share in the exhilaration of the day. They dropped down slowly into Dartmouth and lost sight of her.