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Suddenly, as I remember it, the factor of passion came. She crouched there, and I stood over her, and neither of us said a word. But it was just as though something had been shouted from the sky. Cothope had gone twenty paces perhaps when she uncovered her face. "I shan't want any water," she said. "Call him back." After that the spirit of our relations changed. The old ease had gone.
I could see Carnaby and Beatrice on horseback, and two girls I did not know with them; Cothope and three or four workmen I employed; my aunt and Mrs. Levinstein, who was staying with her, on foot, and Dimmock, the veterinary surgeon, and one or two others. My shadow moved a little to the north of them like the shadow of a fish.
I went on through the plantations and out upon the downs, and thence I saw Cothope with a new glider of his own design soaring down wind to my old familiar "grounding" place. To judge by its long rhythm it was a very good glider. "Like Cothope's cheek," thought I, "to go on with the research. I wonder if he's keeping notes.... But all this will have to stop." He was sincerely glad to see me.
I had made one or two ascents in the balloons of the Aero Club before I started my gasometer and the balloon shed and gave Cothope a couple of months with Sir Peter Rumchase.
Lord Roberts B, even in his partially deflated condition in his shed, was a fine thing to stare up at. I stood side by side with Cothope regarding him, and it was borne in upon me more acutely than ever that all this had to end. I had a feeling just like the feeling of a boy who wants to do wrong, that I would use up the stuff while I had it before the creditors descended.
I read the newspapers after breakfast I and my aunt together and then I walked up to see what Cothope had done in the matter of Lord Roberts B. Never before had I appreciated so acutely the ample brightness of the Lady Grove gardens, the dignity and wide peace of all about me.
I'm rolling and dropping down through all the scaffolding of the social system.... It's all a chance whether I roll out free at the bottom, or go down a crack into the darkness out of sight for a year or two." "The sun," she remarked irrelevantly, "has burnt you.... I'm getting down." She swung herself down into my arms, and stood beside me face to face. "Where's Cothope?" she asked. "Gone."
She lay in my arms, and I thought for a moment she had fainted. "Very near a nasty accident," said Cothope, coming up and regarding our grouping with disfavour. He took her horse by the bridle. "Very dangerous thing coming across us like that." Beatrice disengaged herself from me, stood for a moment trembling, and then sat down on the turf "I'll just sit down for a moment," she said.
Her interest in me was from the first undisguised. She found her way to my worksheds and developed rapidly, in spite of the sincere discouragement of Cothope, into a keen amateur of aeronautics. She would come sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes afoot with an Irish terrier, sometimes riding.
"Oh!" she said. She covered her face with her hands, while Cothope looked at her with an expression between suspicion and impatience. For some moments nobody moved. Then Cothope remarked that perhaps he'd better get her water.
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