" He made a reckless gesture. "Well, it's
too late to think of that now. Come on."
He threw himself down the bank, held up his hands to catch hers, and
swung her down beside him. The sun slanted warmly along the road and
just ahead flickered the blue ripples of a lake.
Sylvie moved quickly and easily beside him, barely touching his arm
with her hand. She seemed definitely to decide to put away her
childishness. She treated him as though she had forgotten his supposed
youth; she talked straightforwardly, with a certain dignity, about
her childhood, about her amusing and pitiful experience as a
third-rate little actress, and she asked him a question now and then
half diffidently, which he answered in stumbling, careful speech,
always weighed upon by his promise, by the deception he must practice,
by the dread of what must come. Nevertheless, minute by minute, his
pulse quickened. This, God be thanked, would mean the end. The
insufferable knot of circumstance, so fantastic, so extravagantly
unlivable and unreal, would break, Hugh would tear the tangle of his
making to tatters with angry hands when they got back. His difficult
trust in Pete's promise would go down under the strain of these long
and unexplained hours of Sylvie's absence in his company.
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