"Oh I see," Mr Rock commented. "It's my ears," he said.

At this moment the swill began to boil with mustard bursting bubbles and, as a result, a stench rose from the copper harsh enough to turn the proudest stomach. Birt would have gone off at once but did not like to leave at a moment of awkwardness and incomprehension. Because, also, of his love for Elizabeth, he did not wish to antagonise the old man, so put up with the smell. Besides, he had promised to wait.

"At last," Mr Rock said, and came to Sebastian's rescue by moving away on his own. "Have you had breakfast?"

"Oh yes, thanks all the same, I had mine up at the Institute," Birt lied, so as not to saddle the sage with the need to prepare an extra portion. For his part Mr Rock showed no sign of what he felt as, with simplicity, he waited by the kitchen entrance for Sebastian to pass first. Even in this room Sebastian imagined he could taste the stink of swill. But just then Elizabeth entered, and the young man forgot in anxiously watching to find how she might be. Much could, as a rule, be told from the clothes she wore, from her manner when she set out.

"What's it to be?" Mr Rock asked, as he took a saucepan off a nail.

"Why Gapa," she said, eyes smiling upon Sebastian. "How sweet you are to us, but you mustn't bother, not on a day like this. I couldn't now," she said.

"Sebastian, you talk to her," Mr Rock suggested. The young man looked gravely at him.

"Don't think there's anything I can do, sir," he said with a sort of adolescent's smiling courtesy, out of place in a beak.

"Now Elizabeth. ." Mr Rock began at once, but she interrupted.

"No," she said. "It's no use, I won't listen, either of you. Come on Seb, the weather's too good to waste inside." She took his hand, led him out. "Don't you ever smell anything besides your pretty students?" she asked in a low voice. "I believe you don't, and that's what makes you lucky," she said, as they turned into the ride by which Mr Rock had gained the big house earlier. It was noticeable how, when with her love, she no longer hesitated with her spoken feelings. "Darling, you're the luckiest man," she said, and sniffed fresh air.

"You're looking so much better," he told Elizabeth as they dawdled up the ride, holding hands. She was not tall like Winstanley, yet came head and shoulders above him.

"Oh Seb, I don't know that you'll ever forgive me; all my stupid hesitations," she said.

The sun, which was not high yet, came aslant between trees with a smoky light, much as it had through Mrs Blain's great window, and struck their blue shadows sideways.

"Most of it's my fault, I do know that." He spoke sincerely.

"Why no," she murmured back. "You're perfect."

"If we hadn't met," he said, "you’d never've had your breakdown, would you?"

"I might. You can't tell. Now I've had one, I know," she said. "Actually, I believe you saved me, my reason I mean."

"Oh Liz, it was hardly as bad, come now."

"That's how it felt," she answered. "And I've been such a fool all this time not realising my own mind."

He did not dare ask whether he was to understand she had at last decided what she wanted of him. His experience with her had taught Birt that she took refuge in a vast quagmire of vagueness when at all pressed. So, heart beating, because it was genuinely important how she would put it, he waited.

"Sometimes I wonder if you'll ever forgive," she began again. "Oh I can't imagine why you picked me out," she said. "I get frightened sometimes you won't ever see me the way I really am. But one thing I'm sure now. I worried so at the start. D'you think I'd better tell? Well, I will. It was about Gapa. He's very famous. You see, I thought it might all be because of him."

He again felt he must at all costs make her right.

"What d'you mean?" he asked patiently.

"When you first showed an interest," she said. "Last Christmas. The time you began coming across the park to see us. Oh, for quite a long while I was sure you only did it to be by Gapa."

"Did you?" he said, indulgently.

She bridled, rather, at his tone. "Well, if you do want to understand I'm not so entirely certain even now, sometimes," she said.

"You're jealous," he said, trying to make it into a joke.

"Of my own grandfather?" she asked, and laughed. "No, but I might be if he had a great granddaughter. That would be different, right enough."

"Liz, don't be absurd."

"Oh but I'm so much older'n you."

"Liz darling, we've been into this before."

"A whole eight years, Seb. It's not fair. When you're forty I'll have a Gapa head. Think of that."

"I have," he said, and sighed.

"There you are you see, you sigh, which is just what I mean," she pointed out. "And, if you're like you are now, what will it be when our time really comes. Isn't it extraordinary? One starts out light as a feather, then everything gets difficult." Her voice was despairing.

"If you care to know, I can't abide him."

"Who?" she asked, for, in her distress, she had lost track of the conversation.

"Your grandfather."

"Don't be so ridiculous," she said in a most friendly way. "You know you dote on Gapa."

"What makes you say?"

"Why, it's in everything you do when you're together. Even if you're both just chatting, hard at it, your own voice drops you respect him so much and, poor dear, he's got to such a state of deafness he doesn't catch what's said."

"Do I?" he asked, guardedly.

"No-one has any idea of how they are," she explained. "And he adores you."

"Are you sure?" the young man enquired, not at all convinced.

"There you go, you see. The moment I tell, I can judge from your voice you're delighted. Oh darling, am I being very difficult, again?"

"Of course not, Liz, but I would like to get this untangled."

"Sometimes I can't imagine how you put up with me," she said, putting his arm in hers to press it to her side. "And who am I to be jealous of my own dear, dear Gapa if he is, even in part, the reason why you come over so often? Because I've a lot more to be grateful to him about then, haven't I? Oh when I'm well again I shall make things up to him, you've no notion how much, and should everything go right, when I come through this, I'll make it up to you too, my darling, even if it takes me the rest of my life, and all my breath."

He kissed her as they walked on. "Don't take this so hard, Liz," he said.

"You're such a brute," she said tenderly.

"What's this?" he asked.

"To make me love you like I do," she said.

"That's my whole point," he took her up. "We can't help ourselves, can we? Things happen. When two people fall in love it's not their fault, surely? They can't help it."

"It must be the fault of one of them."

"How can you say that, dear?"

"When the girl is so much older, then she's to blame."

"You know I'm a fatalist," he said with an effort. "I don't know any serious economist who isn't. It's an occupational risk with economists." He used a sort of bantering tone with which to speak of his profession. The trick he had with a conversation whereby he would bring it to what he considered to be the level of the person he addressed, was more highly developed when with Elizabeth than it was when he spoke to Mr Rock; in other company, it was the impulse which led him to do his imitations. She was aware of this. She did not approve.