THE marshes¹ stretched mellow³ in the autumn sun, sheep wandered about, nibbling⁴ contentedly⁵, or lay down to rest in groups, the sky reflecting itself in the narrow dykes⁶ gave a blue colour to the water, a scent⁷ of the sea was in the air as one breathed it, flocks of plover⁸ rose, now and then, crying softly. Betty, walking with her dog, had passed a heron standing⁹ at the edge of a pool.  
From her first discovery of them, she had been attracted by the marshes with their English suggestion of the Roman Campagna, their broad expanse of level land spread out to the sun and wind, the thousands of white sheep dotted or clustered as far as eye could reach, the hues¹⁰ of the marsh² grass and the plants growing thick at the borders of the strips of water. Its beauty was all its own and curiously¹¹ aloof¹² from the softly-wooded, undulating world about it. Driving or walking along the high road—the road the Romans had built to London town long centuries ago—on either side of one were meadows, farms, scattered¹³ cottages, and hop¹⁴ gardens, but beyond and below stretched the marsh land, golden and grey, and always alluring¹⁵ one by its silence.
 
“I never pass it without wanting to go to it—to take solitary¹⁶ walks over it, to be one of the spots on it as the sheep are. It seems as if, lying there under the blue sky or the low grey clouds with all the world held at bay by mere¹⁷ space and stillness, they must feel something we know nothing of. I want to go and find out what it is.”
 
This she had once said to Mount Dunstan.
 
So she had fallen into the habit of walking there with her dog at her side as her sole companion, for having need for time and space for thought, she had found them in the silence and aloofness¹⁸.
 
Life had been a vivid and pleasurable thing to her, as far as she could look back upon it. She began to realise that she must have been very happy, because she had never found herself desiring existence other than such as had come to her day by day. Except for her passionate¹⁹ childish regret at Rosy²⁰'s marriage, she had experienced no painful feeling. In fact, she had faced no hurt in her life, and certainly had been confronted by no limitations. Arguing that girls in their teens usually fall in love, her father had occasionally wondered that she passed through no little episodes of sentiment, but the fact was that her interests had been larger and more numerous than the interests of girls generally are, and her affectionate intimacy²¹ with himself had left no such small vacant spaces as are frequently filled by unimportant young emotions. Because she was a logical creature, and had watched life and those living it with clear and interested eyes, she had not been blind to the path which had marked itself before her during the summer's growth and waning²². She had not, at first, perhaps, known exactly when things began to change for her—when the clarity of her mind began to be disturbed. She had thought in the beginning—as people have a habit of doing—that an instance—a problem—a situation had attracted her attention because it was absorbing enough to think over. Her view of the matter had been that as the same thing would have interested her father, it had interested herself. But from the morning when she had been conscious of the sudden fury roused in her by Nigel Anstruthers' ugly sneer²³ at Mount Dunstan, she had better understood the thing which had come upon her. Day by day it had increased and gathered power, and she realised with a certain sense of impatience²⁴ that she had not in any degree understood it when she had seen and wondered at its effect on other women. Each day had been like a wave encroaching farther upon the shore she stood upon. At the outset a certain ignoble²⁵ pride—she knew it ignoble—filled her with rebellion. She had seen so much of this kind of situation, and had heard so much of the general comment. People had learned how to sneer because experience had taught them. If she gave them cause, why should they not sneer at her as at things? She recalled what she had herself thought of such things—the folly²⁶ of them, the obviousness—the almost deserved disaster. She had arrogated²⁷ to herself judgment²⁸ of women—and men—who might, yes, who might have stood upon their strip of sand, as she stood, with the waves creeping in, each one higher, stronger, and more engulfing²⁹ than the last. There might have been those among them who also had knowledge of that sudden deadly joy at the sight of one face, at the drop of one voice. When that wave submerged one's pulsing being, what had the world to do with one—how could one hear and think of what its speech might be? Its voice clamoured too far off.
 
As she walked across the marsh she was thinking this first phase over. She had reached a new one, and at first she looked back with a faint, even rather hard, smile. She walked straight ahead, her mastiff, Roland, padding along heavily close at her side. How still and wide and golden it was; how the cry of plover and lifting trill of skylark assured one that one was wholly encircled by solitude³⁰ and space which were more enclosing than any walls! She was going to the mounds³¹ to which Mr. Penzance had trundled G. Selden in the pony³² chaise, when he had given him the marvellous hour which had brought Roman camp and Roman legions to life again. Up on the largest hillock one could sit enthroned, resting chin in hand and looking out under level lids at the unstirring, softly-living loveliness of the marsh-land world. So she was presently seated, with her heavy-limbed Roland at her feet. She had come here to try to put things clearly to herself, to plan with such reason as she could control. She had begun to be unhappy, she had begun—with some unfairness—to look back upon the Betty Vanderpoel of the past as an unwittingly self-sufficient young woman, to find herself suddenly entangled³³ by things, even to know a touch of desperateness.
 
“Not to take a remnant from the ducal bargain counter,” she was saying mentally. That was why her smile was a little hard. What if the remnant from the ducal bargain counter had prejudices of his own?
 
“If he were passionately—passionately in love with me,” she said, with red staining her cheeks, “he would not come—he would not come—he would not come. And, because of that, he is more to me—MORE! And more he will become every day—and the more strongly he will hold me. And there we stand.”
 
Roland lifted his fine head from his paws, and, holding it erect³⁴ on a stiff, strong neck, stared at her in obvious inquiry³⁵. She put out her hand and tenderly patted him.
 
“He will have none of me,” she said. “He will have none of me.” And she faintly smiled, but the next instant shook her head a little haughtily³⁶, and, having done so, looked down with an altered expression upon the cloth of her skirt, because she had shaken upon it, from the extravagant³⁷ lashes³⁸, two clear drops.
 
It was not the result of chance that she had seen nothing of him for weeks. She had not attempted to persuade herself of that. Twice he had declined an invitation to Stornham, and once he had ridden past her on the road when he might have stopped to exchange greetings, or have ridden on by her side. He did not mean to seem to desire, ever so lightly, to be counted as in the lists. Whether he was drawn³⁹ by any liking⁴⁰ for her or not, it was plain he had determined⁴¹ on this.
 
If she were to go away now, they would never meet again. Their ways in this world would part forever. She would not know how long it took to break him utterly—if such a man could be broken. If no magic change took place in his fortunes—and what change could come?—the decay about him would spread day by day. Stone walls last a long time, so the house would stand while every beauty and stateliness within it fell into ruin. Gardens would become wildernesses⁴², terraces and fountains crumble⁴³ and be overgrown, walls that were to-day leaning would fall with time. The years would pass, and his youth with them; he would gradually change into an old man while he watched the things he loved with passion die slowly and hard. How strange it was that lives should touch and pass on the ocean of Time, and nothing should result—nothing at all! When she went on her way, it would be as if a ship loaded with every aid of food and treasure had passed a boat in which a strong man tossed, starving to death, and had not even run up a flag.
 
“But one cannot run up a flag,” she said, stroking Roland. “One cannot. There we stand.”
 
To her recognition of this deadlock⁴⁴ of Fate, there had been adding the growing disturbance⁴⁵ caused by yet another thing which was increasingly troubling, increasingly difficult to face.
 
Gradually, and at first with wonderful naturalness of bearing, Nigel Anstruthers had managed to create for himself a singular place in her everyday life. It had begun with a certain personalness in his attitude, a personalness which was a thing to dislike, but almost impossible openly to resent. Certainly, as a self-invited guest in his house, she could scarcely protest against the amiability⁴⁶ of his demeanour and his exterior⁴⁷ courtesy and attentiveness⁴⁸ of manner in his conduct towards her. She had tried to sweep away the objectionable quality in his bearing, by frankness, by indifference⁴⁹, by entire lack of response, but she had remained conscious of its increasing as a spider's web might increase as the spider spun⁵⁰ it quietly over one, throwing out threads so impalpable that one could not brush them away because they were too slight to be seen. She was aware that in the first years of his married life he had alternately resented the scarcity⁵¹ of the invitations sent them and rudely refused such as we............