It was the afternoon of a brilliant summer day, and the Thames was full of water-parties going home, full of frolic and merriment, and pretty ladies in fine dresses, and men in flannels, in that négligé which Englishmen alone know how to make agreeable and pleasant to behold. The sight of all that pleasure had a pleasurable effect upon the parson’s wife, though she had no share in it. And the charm of the scene—the river, struck full by the level sunshine which made it blaze, the colour and movement of the continually passing boats, the more tranquil river-people about—fishermen in their punts, who had sat there all day long, and looked ‘as steadfast as the scene,’ immovable like the trees that overhung the water—was delightful to Joyce, who had so soon acquired associations with that river, and to whom her two expeditions upon it were the most delightful of her life. She was leaning upon the bridge, looking over, watching the measured movement of the oars, as a party of small boats together swept down the stream, and thinking, not of them, but of her own water-party, and the strange enchantment in it—when she suddenly saw in one of the passing boats a figure which made her heart jump with sudden excitement. It was Captain Bellendean, who was standing up in the stern of the boat behind a gay party of ladies, steering, which was a difficult operation enough at that moment. He was too much absorbed in his occupation to look up, but Joyce had no difficulty in identifying him. His outline, his attitude, would have been enough for her quick eyes; his face was almost stern in the intentness with which he was surveying the river, guiding the deeply-laden boat through the dangers of that passage, amid a crowd of other boats, many of them manned by very unskilful boatmen,—and entirely unconscious of her observation.
The sight of him gave the sensitive girl a curious shock. She
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 knew very well that his life was altogether apart from hers, that he must be engaged in many scenes and many pleasures with which she had nothing to do, and that the point at which their two lives came in contact at all was a very narrow one. She knew all this as well as it was possible to know such an evident matter of fact; and yet, somehow, this sudden proof of it, and sight of him passing her by, unconscious of her existence, in the society to which, and not to her, he belonged, had an effect upon Joyce altogether out of proportion to the easiness of the incident. Where had he been? Who were the people who were with him? Had it been as delightful to him as when he had made it a scene of enchantment and delight to her? She did not ask herself these questions. She only recognised in one swift moment that there he was in his own life, altogether unaware of, and unconcerned by, hers. The shock, the recognition, the instant identification of all these facts, were complete in a moment—the moment which it took the boat, propelled by four strong pairs of arms, to shoot within the shadow of the bridge—and no more.
‘Why! wasn’t that your friend, Captain Bellendean, standing up steering that big boat?’ Mrs. Sitwell said.
Joyce had a curious sensation as if she were standing quite alone, separate from all the world, and that this was some ‘airy tongue that syllables men’s names’ echoing in her ears. She heard herself murmur as if she too were but a voice, ‘Yes, I think so’—while the glowing river and the drooping trees, and all the gleams of mingled colour, melted and ran into each other confusedly like the mists of a dream.
‘I am sure it is. What a wonderful thing when one has all sorts of things to do, to watch those people who have nothing to do but amuse themselves! He has been philandering about with his ladies all day, and probably he will be out at half-a-dozen parties, or lounging in his club half the night—and the same thing to-morrow and to-morrow. Well, on the whole, you know I think it must be dull, and not half so good as our own hard-working life,’ Mrs. Sitwell said; but she sighed. Then turning upon Joyce with a sudden laugh— ‘I forgot you were one of the butterflies too.’
‘Oh no,’ said Joyce, ‘only twice’—thinking of those enchanted afternoons upon the water, and having only half emerged from the curious haze of enlightenment, of realisation, if such a paradox may be, which had surrounded her. She thought, but was not sure, that her companion laughed at this inconsequent reply. Only twice! How strange it was that these two frivolous
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water-parties—mere pleasure, meaning nothing—should have taken such a place in her life, more than all the hard work of which Mrs. Sitwell (with a sigh) asserted the superiority! The school, the labours in which Joyce had delighted, her aspirations, her Shakespeare class, had all melted away and left no trace; while the Thames with its pleasure-boats, the mingled voices of the rowers and their companions, the tinkle of the oars, the sunshine on the water, appeared to her like the only realities in the haze of her present life. They came back to her with the most astonishing distinctness when this sudden glimpse, which felt like a revelation, but was not—how could it be so?—rather the most ordinary circumstance, the most natural accident, befell her. It was at least a revelation to her; for it showed her how distinctly she remembered every incident, every detail, every word that had been spoken; how the Captain had handed her into the boat; how she had been placed near him, her father on the other side; how he had bent over his oar, speaking to her from time to time; how the others had called to him by the name of Stroke—which at first Joyce had supposed to be a playful nickname, not knowing what it meant—to mind his business, to take care what he was about. Joyce did not know why, but had a curious dazzled sense of his eyes upon her face, of his attention to her every movement, of the curious change in everything when she was drawn into the other boat on the way back, and the cloud that had come over his eyes. All these things were as a picture or a dream to her, not things she remembered as having been, but which seemed to go on and continue and be, like an enchanted world, which, having once come into existence, could never cease.
Only twice! but remaining always—so that she could go back at her pleasure, and float again upon the enchanted stream, and hear again the merry mingled voices, the one of deeper tone sounding through. She recognised with a strange confusion that this sudden, unexpected sight of Captain Bellendean steering another boat, with another crew, disturbed the previous image in her mind in some unexplainable way. It was like the sudden plunge of a stone into the midst of a still water full of reflections, breaking up the reflected images, spreading vague circles of confusion through the lovely unreal world that had been there. It was unreal altogether, everything, both that which had been before and that which now was.
Joyce walked back very soberly by Mrs. Sitwell’s side, vaguely listening to the lively strain of talk, which conveyed scarcely any idea to her mind—hearing, answering, knowing nothing, feeling
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 as if the many-sided practical life in which her companion was so busy, was an unfortunate and troublesome unreality, breaking into experiences so far more vivid and true. She was glad to be rid of Mrs. Sitwell for a moment when they reached the house, where Joyce was to be entertained at tea.
While its mistress flew about seeing that all was ready, Joyce sat down, thankful to be alone, very happy to find silence and stillness round her, even in the little shabby sitting-room, with the faded ornamental desk and the mystery of the photographs at the other end. She wanted to think, to make it all out, to realise what had happened. What had happened! and yet nothing had happened at all. She had seen a boat floating down, with a score of others, passing under the bridge; and what was that to her or to any one? A boat passing, a water-party going down the river, and nothing more. But this was not how it appeared to Joyce: thinking is one thing and seeing another. Whatever she might say to herself, what she continued to see was the Captain standing up in the stern of the long boat, with the steerage-ropes in his vigorous hands, with that pretty group of ladies in the shadow of his erect figure,—another world, another life of which she knew nothing at all. Norman Bellendean had by no means neglected his new friends. Only two days before he had appeared in the afternoon, and had filled the place with that something which Joyce did not understand—that influence and personality which seemed to soften all tones and warm all tints, and charm the common day into miraculous brightness. She said to herself that this was society—that interchange of thoughts and feelings which had always appeared to her the most desirable thing in the world. That she should have found the charm in the sole possession of a cavalry officer—who was, it is true, at the same time, a country gentleman, and the lord and superior of the place which had been her early home, and in which everybody regarded him with an interest half feudal, half friendly—did not surprise her, though a cooler head might have found it a very surprising thing. Joyce believed that Mrs. Bellendean produced the same charmed atmosphere around her. They were the symbols of all higher intelligence and finer breeding, and she was not as yet in any way undeceived, nor suspected any other influence in the delightfulness of the Captain’s visits—a delight which had begun with the very first of them, and which had never failed. It was not, therefore, any kind of jealousy which had sprung up in her mind, even unconsciously. She did not suspect among the ladies in that boat some special one who might have all his best looks and words
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 aside. Her mind was not at all in that conscious phase. She only realised with a curious consternation that he lived his life in another world—that the days when he was absent were to him the same as other days, though to her lost in mystery and the unknown. Where he spent them, with whom he was, mattered nothing. She was not even curious as to who his companions were. The wonder, the shock, consisted in the fact that his life had another side to her absolutely unknown.
In all this there was no pang of jealous love. She was unaware that there was love in it, or anything save wonder and disappointment, and a strange realisation of difference and separation. She did not know where he had been, or who were with him: he might have passed her very door—the other side of the hedge—and she would have been none the wiser. She knew him so well, and yet not at all. Something of the astonishment with which the primitive traveller recognises the existence of a hundred circles of human creatures altogether beyond his ken, who must have gone on living for all those years totally outside of his knowledge, filled her now. The thought affected her with fantastic pain, and yet she had not a word to say against it. Her heart made a claim all unconsciously upon those people who had first awakened its sympathies; and to pass him on the road, as it were, like this, he not even seeing her, unexpectant of her appearance, like two strangers, out of reach of even a passing salutation, was more strange, more overpowering, more enlightening, than anything, she thought, that had ever happened before.
The tea after this was bewildering and rather tedious to Joyce. She wanted to get away to think over her new discovery by herself, and instead she was compelled to share in an evening of lively............