The following Monday was fine and warm, and since the whole previous week had also been fine and warm, Mevrouw thought they might venture to make the talked-of excursion. Messages were accordingly sent to the Snieders, and from the Snieders back again, and after a wonderful amount of talk and arranging, everything was settled. Dinner was a little early that day, and a little hurried, though, since the carriage was not to come till after five o'clock, there was perhaps not much need for that. However, it is not every day in the week one makes an excursion, so naturally things cannot be expected to go quite as usual when such an event occurs.

The carriage came, Mevrouw had been waiting ten minutes, and three times been to see why Julia was not waiting with her. At the sound of wheels Julia came out; she had just finished washing the glasses (which she had been told not to touch, as there was certainly no time). She was quite ready, but Mevrouw at that moment discovered that she had the wrong sunshade. Julia fetched the right one and carried it out for the old lady; also an umbrella with a bow on the handle, a mackintosh, a shawl, and a large basket. Mijnheer came from the office with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, and a minute later Joost also came to say good-bye; even the maidservant came from the kitchen to see them start.

The carriage drew up; it was a strange-looking vehicle, in shape something between a hearse and an ark on wheels, but with the greater part of the sides open to the air. Vrouw Snieder and her two daughters were already within, with their bow-trimmed umbrellas, sunshades, mackintoshes, shawls and basket. There was necessarily a good deal of greeting; Mijnheer and Joost shook hands with all the three ladies, and inquired after Herr Snieder, and received polite inquiries in return. Then Denah insisted on getting out, so that Mevrouw should be better able to get in; also to show that she was athletic and agile, like an English girl, and thought nothing of getting in and out of a high carriage. Mevrouw kissed her husband and son, twice each, very loud, called a good-bye to the servant, and got in. Julia shook hands, said good-bye, and also got in. Denah watched her, and observed the shape of her feet and ankles jealously. She glanced sharply at Joost, but he was not guilty of such indecorum as even thinking about any girl's legs, so, having said her good-bye, she got in reassured. Finally they drove away amid wishes for a safe drive and a pleasant excursion.

Of course there was a little settling to do inside the carriage, the wraps and baskets to be disposed of, and each person to be assured that the others had enough room, and just the place they preferred to any other. By the time that was done they stopped again at the house of Mijnheer's head clerk; here they were to take up two children, girls of fourteen and fifteen, who had been invited to come with the party. The carriage was not kept waiting, the children were out before it had fairly stopped; they were flaxenly fair girls, wearing little blue earrings, Sunday hats, and cotton gloves of course—all the party wore cotton gloves; it was, Julia judged, part of the excursion outfit.

Now they were really off, driving out beyond the outskirts of the town; along flat roads where the wheels sank noiselessly into the soft sand, and the horses' feet clattered on the narrow brick track in the centre. For a time they followed the canal closely, but soon they left it, and saw in the distance nothing but its high green banks, with the brown sails of boats showing above, and looking as if they were a good deal higher than the carriage road. They passed small fields, subdivided into yet smaller patches, and all very highly cultivated. And small black and white houses, and small black and white cows, and black and white goats, and dogs, and even cats of the same combination of colour. Everything was rather small, but everywhere very tidy; nothing out of its place or wasted, and nobody hurrying or idling; all were busy, with a small bustling business, as unlike aggressive English idleness as it was unlike the deceptive, leisurely power of English work.

Denah and Anna looked out of either side of the carriage, and pointed out things to Julia and the two little girls. Here it was what they called a country seat, a sort of castellated variety of overgrown chalÊt, surrounded by a wonderful garden of blazing flower-beds and emerald lawns, all set round with rows and rows of plants in bright red pots. Or there it was a cemetery, where the peaceful aspect made Denah sentimental, and the beauty of the trees drew Anna's praise. The two elder ladies paid less attention to what they passed; they contented themselves with leaning back and saying how beautiful the air was, and how refreshing the country. The girls said that as well; they all agreed six times within the hour that it was a delightful expedition, and they enjoying it much.

In time they came to the wood. An unpaved road ran through it of soft, deep sand, which deadened every sound; on either hand the trees rose, pines and larch and beech principally, with a few large-leafed shivering poplars here and there. There was no undergrowth, and few bird songs, only the dim wood aisles stretching away, quiet and green. Suddenly it seemed to Julia that the world's horizon had been stretched, the little neatness, the clean, trim brightness, the bustling, industrious toy world was gone; in its place was the twilight of the trees, the silence, the repose, the haunting, indefinable sense of home which is only to be found in these cathedrals of Nature's making.

"Ah, the wood!" Denah said, with a profound sigh. "The beautiful wood! Miss Julia, do you not love it?"

Julia did not assent, but Denah went on quite satisfied, "You cannot love it as I do; I think I am a child of Nature, nothing would please me more than always to live here."

"You would have to go into the town sometimes," Julia said, "to buy gloves; the ones you have would not last for ever."

Denah looked a little puzzled by the difficulty; she had not apparently thought out the details of life in a natural state; but before she could come to any conclusion one of the little girls cried, "Music—I hear music!"

All the ladies said "Delicious!" together, and "How beautiful!" and Denah, content to ignore Nature, added rapturously, "Music in the wood! Ah, exquisite! two beauties together!"

Julia echoed the remark, though the music was that of a piano-organ. The horizon had drawn in again, and the prospect narrowed; the silence was full of noises now, voices and laughter, amidst which the organ notes did not seem out of place. And near at hand under the trees there were tables spread and people having tea, enjoying themselves in a simple-hearted, noisy fashion, in no way suggestive of cathedral twilight.

The carriage was put up, the tea ordered, and in a little they, too, were sitting at one of the square tables. Each lady was provided with a high wooden chair, and a little wooden box footstool. A kettle on a hot potful of smouldering wood ashes was set on the table; cups and saucers and goats' milk were also supplied to them, and opaque beet-root sugar. The food they had brought in their baskets, big new broodje split in half, buttered and put together again with a slither of Dutch cheese between. These and, to wind up with, some thin sweet biscuits carried in a papier-machÉ box, and handed out singly by Vrouw Van Heigen, who had brought them as a surprise and a treat.

"Do they have such picnics as this in England?" Anna asked, as she gathered up the crumbs of her biscuit.

"I have never been to one," Julia answered, and inwardly she thought of her mother and Violet driving in a wheeled ark to the wood, there to sit at little wooden tables and stretch their mouths in the public eye.

"Ah!" said Vrouw Snieder; "then it is all the more of a pleasure and a novelty to you."

Julia said it was, and soon afterwards they rose from the table to walk in the wood. The two elder ladies did not get far, and before long came back to sit on their wooden chairs again. The girls went some little distance, all keeping together, and being careful not to wander out of sight and sound of the other picnic parties. Once when they came to the extreme limit of their walk, Julia half-hesitated. She looked into the quiet green distance. It would be easy to leave them, to give them the slip; she could walk at double their pace with half their exertion, she could lose herself among the trees while they were wondering why she had gone, and making up their minds to follow her; and, most important of all, when she came back she could explain everything quite easily, so that they would not think it in the least strange—an accident, a missing of the way, anything. Should she do it—should she? The wild creature that had lived half-smothered within her for all the twenty years of her life fluttered and stirred. It had stirred before, rebelling against the shams of the Marbridge life, as it rebelled against the restrictions of the present; it had never had scope or found vent; still, for all that it was not dead; possibly, even, it was growing stronger; it called her now to run away. But she did not do it; advisability, the Polkingtons' patron saint, suggested to her that one does not learn to shine in the caged life by allowing oneself the luxury of occasional escape.

She turned her back on the green distance. "Shall we not go back to where the music is playing?" she said.

They went, walking with their arms entwined as other girls were doing, Julia between the broad, white-skinned sisters, like a rapier between cushions. The two younger girls ran on in front. "There is Mevrouw," they cried. "She is calling us. The carriage is ready, too; oh, do you think it is already time to go?"

It seemed as if it really was the case. Vrouw Snieder stood clapping her hands and beckoning to them, and the coachman appeared impatient to be off. With reluctance, and many times repeated regrets, they collected their wraps and baskets, and got into the carriage.

"Good-bye, beautiful wood, good-bye!" Denah said, leaning far out as they started. "Oh, if one could but remain here till the moon rose!"

"It would be very damp," her mother observed. "The dew would fall."

To which incontestable remark Denah made no reply.

The return journey was much like the drive there, with one exception; they passed one object of interest they had not seen before. It was when they were nearing the outskirts of the town that Anna exclaimed, "An Englishman! Look, look, Miss Julia, a compatriot of yours!"

The season was full early for tourists, and at no time did the place attract many. Englishmen who came now probably came on business which was unlikely to bring them out to these quiet, flat fields. But Anna and Denah, who joined her in a much more demonstrative look-out than Marbridge would have considered well-bred, were insistent on the nationality.

"He walks like an Englishman," Anna said, "as if all the world belonged to him."

"And looks like one," Denah added; "he has no moustache, and wears a glass in his eye, look, Miss Julia."

Julia looked, then drew back rather quickly. They were right, it was an Englishman; it was of all men Rawson-Clew.

What was he doing here? By what extraordinary chance he came to be in this unlikely place she could not think. She was very glad that Mevrouw felt the air chilly, and so had had the leather flaps pulled over part of the open sides of the carriage; this and the eager sisters screened her so well that it was unlikely he could see her.

"Is he not an Englishman?" Anna asked.

"Yes," she answered; "one could not mistake him for anything else."

"I wonder if he recognised you as a country-woman," Anna speculated; and Julia said she did not consider herself typically English in appearance.

The sisters talked for the rest of the way of the Englishman; of his air and bearing, and the fact, of which they declared themselves convinced, that he was a person of distinction.

But it was not till the drive was over, and the party had separated, that Denah was able to say what was burning on her tongue. They had left the clerk's children at their house, said good-bye to Vrouw Van Heigen and Julia, and were within their own home at last; the girls went up to their bedroom, and Denah carefully fastened the door, then she said mysteriously, "Miss Julia knows that Englishman."

Anna jumped at the intelligence, and still more at the tone. "Did she tell you?" she asked.

"No," Denah replied with some scorn; "she would not tell any one, she wishes it concealed; she thinks it is so, but I saw it."

The tone and manner suggested many things, but Anna was a terribly matter-of-fact person, to whom suggestions were nothing. "Why should she wish it concealed?" she inquired.

"I do not know why," Denah answered; "that remains to be seen. As for how I know it, I saw it in her face; when she looked at him her lips became set, and her eyes—she looked—" She hesitated for a word, and dropped to the homely, "She looked as if she would bite with annoyance that he should be here. The expression was gone in a moment; she spoke with an ease and naturalness that was astonishing, even disgusting; but it had been there. I do not trust her."

The last was said with great seriousness, and for a little Anna was impressed. But not for long, she could not accept such evidence as this; in her opinion it was "fancy."

"You read too many romances," she said; "your head is full of such things. I do not believe Miss Julia knew the Englishman, she would not have hidden from us her knowledge if she did; it is not so easy to hide one's feelings in the flash of an eye, besides there was no reason. Also"—this as an afterthought—"he was a man of good family; you could see at a glance that he was of the aristocracy, while she is a paid companion to Vrouw Van Heigen; she could never before have met him."

Denah, however, was not convinced; she only repeated darkly, "I mistrust her."

Julia, in the meantime, was busy with her household duties, talking over the excursion the while with Mevrouw, and helping to detail it to Mijnheer. At last the table was ready for supper and the coffee made. Mevrouw sat with her crochet, and Mijnheer opposite her with his paper. It wanted more than a quarter of an hour to supper time, Julia had been too quick; still it did not matter, the coffee would not hurt standing on the spirit-stove; it stood there half the day. She had all this time to spare, but she did not fetch her crochet work; she went outside to the veranda.

It was almost dark by this time, as dark as it ever got on these nights; the air was still and warm. She opened the glass door and went out and sat down on the step. There was a smell of water in the air, not unpleasant, but quite un-English, and mixed with it a faint smell of flowers, the late blooming bulbs have little scent on the whole; it was more the heavy dew than the flowers themselves which one could smell. It was very quiet out here; the town, at no time noisy, was some distance away—so quiet that Julia could hear the ticking of Mr. Gillat's large watch in her belt. She pushed it further down; she did not want to hear it.

She propped her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her hands. She wished she had not seen Rawson-Clew that day; she wished she was not here, she wished there was no such thing as a blue daffodil; she was vaguely angry and dissatisfied, but not willing to face things. It was unlikely that the man had seen her, unlikely that she would see him again; but he was incongruous in this simple life, and he brought forcibly home the incongruity of herself and her errand. She had come for the blue daffodil, it was no good pretending she had not; she told herself angrily, as she had told herself when she had first looked at Johnny's yellow-faced watch, that she was going to get it in some way that was justifiable. Only it was not so easy to believe that now she knew more about it and the Van Heigens. But she must have it, that was the argument she fell back on, the necessity was so great that she was justified (the Polkingtons had always found necessity a justification for doing things that could be anyhow made to square with their position).

She wished she had not been for the excursion to-day, that she lived less really in their simple, sincere life. She wished from her heart that the Van Heigens had been different sort of people—almost any other sort, then she would not have had these tiresome feelings—Johnny and Johnny's watch, Joost Van Heigen—there was something about them all that was hatefully embarrassing. No self-respecting thief robbed a child; even the most apathetic conscience revolted at such an idea. No gentleman worthy of the name attacked an unarmed man, the preparedness of the parties made all the difference between murder and fair fight. Of course, in the abstract, stealing was stealing under all conditions, and killing killing, and both open to condemnation; but in the concrete, in fact, the equality of the two persons made all the difference, at least to honour.

Julia moved uneasily and looked, without seeing, across the dark garden. The monotonous sound of voices floated out indistinctly; the old pair in the sitting-room were talking in the lamplight, Mevrouw going over once again the little incidents of the day. Joost was in the drawing-room at the other end of the house; he had been playing some of his favourite composer; he had stopped now, and was doubtless sorting his music and putting it away, each piece four-square and absolutely neat. Day by day, and year by year, they lived this quiet life, with a drive for a rare holiday treat, and the discovery of a new flower as the goal of all hope and ambition. Things did not happen to them, bad things that needed doubtful remedies; they had never had to scratch for their living, and show one face outwards and another in. They, none of them, ever wanted to do things; they had not the courage. How much of virtue was lack of courage and a desire not to be remarkable?

Julia asked herself the question defiantly, and did not hear Joost come out of the house. He was carrying a lantern, and was going to make his nightly round of the barns. She did not hear his step, and so started when she saw the light swing across the ground at her feet.

He was quite as startled to see her as she was to see him, but his greeting was a very usual question in Holland, "Will you not catch cold?"

She shook her head, and he asked, "What are you doing? Thinking? Weaving in your head all that you have seen and heard to-day?"

"No," she answered; "I was thinking about courage."

"Courage?" he repeated, puzzled.

"Yes, it is very different in different places; some people are afraid to tell the truth, so they lie; and some are afraid to be dishonest, so they are honest; I believe it depends partly on fashion."

Joost set down the lantern in sheer surprise. "Such things cannot depend on fashion," he said severely.

"I am not so sure," Julia answered; "lots of things you would not expect depend on it. I know people who sometimes go without the food they want so that they can buy expensive cakes to show off when their acquaintances come to tea—that's silly, isn't it? Then I know other people who blush if a pair of breeches, or something equally inoffensive, are mentioned; that seems equally silly. One lot of people is ashamed to be seen eating bread-and-cheese suppers, another lot is ashamed to be seen walking off the side-walk, and with no gloves on. One would hardly expect in, yet I almost believe these silly little things somehow make a difference to what the people think right and wrong."

Joost regarded her doubtfully, though he could only see the outline of her face. "Are you making fun?" he asked. "I do not know when you are making fun; I think you must be now. Are you speaking of us?"

"I never felt less like making fun in my life," Julia answered ignoring the last question. Something in her tone struck Joost as sad, and he forgot his question in sympathy.

"I am sorry," he said; "you are unhappy, and I have intruded upon you; will you forgive me? You are thinking of your home, no doubt; you have not had a letter from England for a long time."

Julia wished he did not notice so many things. "I did not expect a letter," she said; "my eldest sister was married last week, there would be no time to write to me till everything was over; most likely I shall hear to-morrow."

"Is your sister married?" he asked; "and you were not able to be present?"

"It is too far to go home from here," Julia said; then asked, "Were you going to the barns?"

"Yes," he answered, suddenly reminded of the fact. Then seeing she did not resume her seat on the steps, he ventured diffidently, "Will you come too?"

She assented, and they started together in silence, Joost thinking her homesick, not knowing quite what to say. When they came to the first of the dark buildings they went in, and he swung the lantern round so that their shadows danced fantastically. Then he tried various doors, and glanced up the wall-ladder to the square opening which led to the floor above. There was no need to examine the place minutely, it was all quiet and dark; if there had been any one about they would certainly have heard, and if there had been anything smouldering—a danger more to be feared, seeing that the men smoked everywhere—it could have been smelt in the dry air.

"I like these barns," Julia said, looking round: "they are so big and quiet and orderly, somehow so respectable."

"Respectable!" he repeated, as if he did not approve of the word. "Is that what you like? The respectable?"

"Yes, in its place; and its place is here."

"You think us respectable?"

"Well, are you not? I think you are the most respectable people in the world."

She led the way through to the next barn as she spoke. "You are going here, too, I suppose?" she said.

"I will just look round," he answered.

They went on together until they came to the last barn of all; while they paused there a moment they heard a rustling and movement in the dark, far corner. Joost started violently, then he said, "It is a rat, you must not be afraid; it will not run this way."

"I am not afraid," Julia said with amusement. "Do you think I am afraid of rats?"

"Girls often are."

"Well, I am not," and it was clear from her manner that she spoke the truth.

"Would you be afraid to come out here alone?" he asked curiously.

"No," she said; "any night that you like I will come here alone, go through the barns and fasten the doors."

"I do not believe there are many girls who would do that," he said; he was thinking of Denah and Anna.

Julia told him there were plenty who would. As they came back, stopping to fasten each door after them, he remarked, "I think girls are usually brought up with too much protection; I mean girls of our class, they are too much shielded; one has them for the house only; if they were flowers I would call them stove-plants."

Julia laughed. "You believe in the emancipation of women then?" she said; "you would rather a woman could take care of herself, and not be afraid, than be womanly?"

"No," he answered; "I would like them to be both, as you are."

They had come outside now; she was standing in the misty moon-light, while he stayed to fasten the last door.

"I?" she said; "you seem to think me a paragon—clever, brave, womanly. Do you know what I really am? I am bad; by a long way the wickedest person you have known."

But he did not believe her, which was perhaps not altogether surprising.