They passed a great many other boats, most of them small scows or barges on which were crowded whole families who had no country homes and had taken that means of escaping the plague. But though they exchanged mutual greetings and news, people were still distrustful of one another. Those who had avoided the sickness this long had no wish to risk it now.

They progressed slowly, past Hampton and Staines and Windsor and Maidenhead, stopping whenever they found a spot they liked and staying there for as long as they liked and then going on again. By the time they had been gone a night and a day London and its dying thousands seemed to be in another world, almost another age. Amber began to improve more rapidly, and she was as determined as Bruce to shut those memories from her mind. When they tried to creep in she pushed them aside, refusing to meet them face to face.

I’ll forget there ever was a plague, she insisted.

And gradually it began to seem that Bruce’s sickness and her own, all the events of the past three months had not happened recently but many years ago, in another life. It even seemed they must have happened to other people, not to them. She wondered if he felt the same way, but she never asked, for it was a subject they refused to discuss.

For a while Amber was desolate over her appearance. She was afraid that her beauty was gone forever and that she would be ugly the rest of her life. In spite of everything Bruce could say to try to reassure her she cried with rage and despair every time she saw a mirror.

“Oh, my God!” she would wail dismally. “I’d rather be dead than look like this! Oh, Bruce—I’m never going to look like I did before, I know I’m not! Oh! I hate myself!”

He would put his arms about her, smiling as though she were a naughty child, coaxing away her fear and anguish. “Of course you’re going to look the same, darling. But good Lord, you were mighty sick you know—you can’t expect to be well again in only a few days.” They had not been long on the yacht when her health improved so much that she did begin to look something like her old self.

Both of them realized, as perhaps they never had before, how pleasant it was merely to be alive. They spent hours lying stretched out on cushions on the deck, soaking in hot sunlight, that seemed to penetrate to the very bone—and though Bruce lay naked, his body turning a deep rich brown again, Amber kept herself carefully covered for fear of tanning her own cream-coloured skin. They shared everything, so as to enjoy it more intensely: The late summer sky, clear and blue, painted only here and there with a thin spray of cloud. The sound of a corncrake on a dewy morning. The good smell of earth and warm summer rain. The silver-green leaves of a poplar growing just beside a shallow stream. A little girl, standing amid white daisies, surrounded by her flock of geese.

Later on they began to go into the villages to buy provisions or sometimes to eat a ready-cooked meal, which now seemed a rare luxury and almost an adventure. Amber worried a great deal about Nan and little Susanna, particularly after she found that there was plague in the country, too, but Bruce insisted that she must make herself believe that they were well and safe.

“Nan’s a woman of good sense, and there’s no one more loyal. If it became dangerous where they were she’d go somewhere else. Trust her, Amber, and don’t make yourself miserable worrying.”

“Oh, I do trust her!” she would say. “But I can’t help worrying! Oh, I’ll be so glad when I know they’re well and safe!”

Everything that Amber saw now reminded her of Marygreen and her life there with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Matt. It was rich agricultural country, as was Essex, with prosperous enclosed farms, many orchards, quiet pretty little villages usually no more than two or three miles apart—though often, as she knew, so far as those who lived there were concerned it might as well have been two or three hundred miles. There were cottages of cherry brick with oak frames and thatched roofs that lay like thick blankets over them. Morning-glories and roses climbed the walls and clustered about the dormer windows. Pearl-grey doves perched softly cooing on the steep-slanted roof-tops, and sparrows ruffled themselves in the dusty roadway. It seemed to her now to mean peace and quiet and a kind of contentment which must exist nowhere else on earth.

She tried to tell him something of how she felt and added, “I never used to feel that way about it when I lived there—yet God knows I don’t want to go back!”

He smiled at her tenderly. “You’re growing older, darling.”

Amber. looked at him with surprise and resentment. “Old! Marry come up! I’m not so old! I’m not twenty-two yet!” Women began to feel self-conscious about age as soon as they reached twenty.

He laughed. “I didn’t mean that you’re growing old. Only that you’re enough older you’ve begun to have memories—and memories are always a little sad.”

She digested that thoughtfully, and gave a light sigh. It was just at gloaming and they were walking back to the Sapphire through a low lush river meadow. Nearby they could hear the castanet-like voice of a frog, and the stag-beetles buzzing noisily.

“I suppose so,” she agreed. Suddenly she looked up at him. “Bruce—remember the day we met? I can shut my eyes and see you so plain—the way you sat on your horse, and the look you gave me. It made me shiver inside—I’d never been looked at like that before. I remember the suit you had on—it was black velvet with gold braid—Oh, the most wonderful suit! And how handsome you looked! But you scared me a little bit too. You still do, I think—I wonder why?”

“I’m sure I can’t imagine.” He seemed amused, for she often brought up such remnants of the past, and she never forgot a detail.

“Oh, but just think!” They were crossing a shaky little wooden bridge now, Amber walking ahead, and suddenly she turned and looked up at him. “What if Aunt Sarah hadn’t sent me that day to take the gingerbread to the blacksmith’s wife! We’d never even have known each other! I’d still be in Marygreen!”

“No you wouldn’t. There’d have been other Cavaliers going through—you’d have left Marygreen whether you’d ever seen me or not.”

“Why Bruce Carlton! I would not! I went with you because it was fate—it was in the stars! Our lives are planned in heaven, and you know it!”

“No, I don’t know it, and you don’t either. You may think it, but you don’t feel it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” They were across the bridge, strolling along side by side again, and Ambers switched petulantly at the grass with a little twig she had picked up. Suddenly she flung it away and faced him squarely, her hands catching at his arms. “Don’t you think that we were meant for each other, Bruce? You must think so—now.”

“What do you mean, ‘now’?”

“Why—after everything we’ve been through together. Why else did you stay and take care of me then? You could have gone away when you were well and left me alone—if you hadn’t loved me.”

“My God, Amber, you take me for a greater villain than I am. But of course I love you. And in a sense I agree with you that we were meant for each other.”

“In a sense? What do you mean by that?”

His arms went about her, the fingers of one hand combing through the long glossy mass of her hair, and his mouth came down close to hers. “This is what I mean,” he said softly. “You’re a beautiful woman—and I’m a man. Of course we were meant for each other.”

But, though she did not say anything more about it just then, that was not what she wanted to hear. When she had stayed with him in London, at the risk of her own life, she had not thought of or expected either gratitude or return. But when he had stayed with her, had cared for her as tenderly and devotedly as she had for him—she believed then that he had changed, and that now he would marry her. She had waited, with growing apprehension and misgiving, for him to speak of it—but he had said nothing.

Oh, but that’s not possible! she told herself again and again. If he loved me enough to do all that—he loves me enough to marry me. He thinks I know he will as soon as we’re where we can—that’s why he hasn’t said anything—He thinks I—

But not all her brave assurances could still the doubts and torment that grew more insistent with each day that passed. She began to realize that, after all, nothing had changed—he still intended to go on with his life just as he had planned it, as though there had never been a plague.

She wanted desperately to talk to him about it but, afraid of blighting the harmony there was between them—almost perfect for the first time since they had known each other—she forced herself to put it off and wait for some favourable opportunity.

Meanwhile the days were going swiftly. The holly had turned scarlet; loaded wagons stood in the orchards, and the air was fragrant with the fresh autumn smell of ripe red apples. Once or twice it rained.

They left the boat at Abingdon and stayed overnight in a quiet old inn. The host and hostess finally accepted their certificates-of-health, but with obvious misgivings and only because Bruce gave them five extra guineas—though their money supply was now almost gone. But the next morning they hired horses and a guide and set out for Almsbury’s country home, some sixty miles away. They followed the main road to Gloucester, spent the night there and went on the next day. When they reached Barberry Hill in mid-morning Amber was thoroughly exhausted.

Almsbury came out of the house with a yell. He swung her up off her feet and kissed her and pounded Bruce on the back, telling them all the while how he had tried to find them both—never guessing that they were together—how scared he had been, and how glad he was to have them there with him, alive and well. Emily seemed just as pleased, though considerably less exuberant, and they went inside together.