He thought of these things as he leaned on the stone balustrade there beside Philippa. What she might be thinking of remained to him a mystery impenetrable, for she had passed one arm through his and her cheek rested lightly against his shoulder, and her grey eyes, brooding, seemed lost in the depths of the distant smoke.
And all the while she was saying in her sweet, serene way:
"You will let me go with you, won’t you? It would be very agreeable on the river this afternoon. Such a pleasure you could not sensibly deny me. Besides, the punt is mine, Jim. I don’t let anybody charter it unless captain and crew are included. I am, naturally, the captain. Ariadne is the crew. If you desire to engage a passage to Ausone——"
"Philippa, you little tyrant, do you mean to refuse me the _Lys_?"
"Come down to the river and look her over," she said, drawing him away from the balustrade. "And on the way you may get the pole from the garage."
He was inclined to demur, but she had her way; and ten minutes later they were walking across the fields, he with the pole across his shoulder, she moving lightly and happily beside him, her hair in two braids and the velvet strings of the bonnet fluttering under her rounded chin.
The Ausone road lay white and deserted; the last fugitive from the north had passed. Nor were there any more skiffs or laden boats on the river, nor any signs of life on the quarry road. All was still and sunny and silent; the Récollette slipped along, clear and silvery, between green banks; to the east the calm blue hills stretched away vague with haze; swallows soared and dipped, starring the glass of the stream as though rising fish were breaking its serene surface. But the still air and cobalt sky were heavy with the cannonade, making the stillness of the sun-drenched world almost uncanny.
Philippa, curled up in the punt, had fashioned for herself a chaplet of river lilies. The white blossoms wreathing the black velvet _bonnet à quartiers_, and a huge bouquet of the lovely flowers which she carried in her hand gave a bridal aspect to the affair, heightened presently when she began to festoon the gunwales with lilies and scented rushes from the sedge, as they slipped along inshore to avoid the stronger current of midstream.