Forbes every now and then would break out with some comment on the moving landscape, which showed the delicacy and truth of his painter's sense, or set the boat alive with laughter by some story of the unregenerate Oxford of his own undergraduate days; but there were long stretches of silence when, except to the rowers, the world seemed asleep, and the regular fall of the oars like the pulsing of a hot dream.
It was past five before they steered into the shadow of Nuneham woods.
The meadows just ahead were a golden blaze of light, but here the shade lay deep and green on the still water, spanned by a rustic bridge, and broken every now and then by the stately whiteness of the swans.

Rich steeply-rising woods shut in the left-hand bank, and foliage, grass, and wild flowers seemed suddenly to have sprung into a fuller luxuriance than elsewhere.
'It's too early for tea,' said Mrs.Stuart's clear little voice on the bank; 'at least, if we have it directly it will leave such a long time before the train starts.

Wouldn't a stroll be pleasant first ?' Isabel Bretherton and Kendal only waited for the general assent before they wandered off ahead of the others.

'I should like very much to have a word with you,' she had said to him as he handed her out of the boat.

And now, here they were, and, as Kendal felt, the critical moment was come.
'I only wanted to tell you,' she said, as they paused in the heart of the wood, a little out of breath after a bit of steep ascent, 'that I have got hold of a play for next October that I think you are rather specially interested in--at least, Mr.Wallace told me you had heard it all, and given him advice about it while he was writing it.