“We’ll just sit here,” said Barney, “and if we think of anything worth while saying we’ll say it. Otherwise, not. Don’t imagine you’re bound to talk to me.”

 

“John Foster says,” quoted Valancy, “‘If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely¹ comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you’ll never be and you need not waste time in trying.’”

 

“Evidently John Foster says a sensible thing once in a while,” conceded Barney.

 

They sat in silence for a long while. Little rabbits hopped² across the road. Once or twice an owl³ laughed out delightfully⁴. The road beyond them was fringed with the woven shadow lace of trees. Away off to the southwest the sky was full of silvery little cirrus clouds above the spot where Barney’s island must be.

 

Valancy was perfectly⁷ happy. Some things dawn on you slowly. Some things come by lightning flashes. Valancy had had a lightning flash.

 

She knew quite well now that she loved Barney. Yesterday she had been all her own. Now she was this man’s. Yet he had done nothing—said nothing. He had not even looked at her as a woman. But that didn’t matter. Nor did it matter what he was or what he had done. She loved him without any reservations. Everything in her went out wholly to him. She had no wish to stifle⁸ or disown her love. She seemed to be his so absolutely that thought apart from him—thought in which he did not predominate—was an impossibility.

 

She had realised, quite simply and fully⁶, that she loved him, in the moment when he was leaning on the car door, explaining that Lady Jane had no gas. She had looked deep into his eyes in the moonlight and had known. In just that infinitesimal space of time everything was changed. Old things passed away and all things became new.

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