"Thank you!"--he said warmly--"That'll be an immense relief to my mind." "You mustn't think she'll convert me," said Delia, quickly. "Why, she's a Suffragist!" Delia shrugged her shoulders. "_Pour rire_!" "Let's leave the horrid subject alone--shall we?" Delia assented; and they set out, just as the winter sun of a bright and brilliant afternoon was beginning to drop towards its setting. * * * * * When Delia afterwards looked back on those two hours in Mark Winnington's company, she remembered them as a time enskied and glorified. First, the mere pleasure of the senses--the orange glow of the January evening, the pleasant crackling of the frosty ground, the exhilaration of exercise, and of the keen pungent air; then the beauty of the village and of the village lanes in the dusk, of the blue smoke drifting along the hill, of the dim reds and whites of the old houses, and the occasional gleams of fire and lamp through the small-paned windows; the gaiety of the children racing home from school, the dignity of the old labourers, the seemliness of the young. It was good to be alive--in England--breathing English air. It was good to be young and strong-limbed, with all one's life before one. And next--and greater--there was the pleasure of Winnington beside her, of his changed manner, of their new comradeship. She felt even a curious joy in the difference of age between them. Now that by some queer change, she had ceased to stand on her dignity with him, to hold him arrogantly at arm's length, there emerged in her a childish confidence and sweetness, enchanting to the man on whom it played. "May I?--" "Do you think I might?--" she would say, gently, throwing out some suggestion or other, as they went in and out of the cottages, and the humbleness in her dark eyes, as though a queen stooped, began to turn his head.