"Do?" said Jasper, as he dismounted. "Well, we've just got to make an announcement and that's the end of it. The Jenkyns lot have all gone." "It isn't the end, it's the beginning," replied Eileen. "Don't you see that we can't even explain?" "We sha'n't try." "We shall. We shall have to--in a way. It'll take years and years to do it. But the point is that they won't understand, now, none of them, not even Elsie Durham. We aren't free any longer." "We aren't alone," she added, bringing the hitherto unacknowledged factor into prominence. Thrale frowned and looked up into the thin brightness of the frosty sky. "Yes, I understand," he said. "It's public opinion that compels one to regard love as shameful and secret. Alone together, free from every suspicion, we hadn't a doubt. But now, we have to explain and we can't explain, and we are forced against our wills to wonder whether we can be right and all the rest of the world wrong." "We are right," put in Eileen. "Only we can't prove it to anyone but ourselves." "And we shouldn't want to, if we hadn't got to live with them." For a moment they looked at one another thoughtfully. "No, we mustn't run away," Jasper said, with determination, after a pause. "Look, the flood has begun to go down already. That's our work. There's other work for us to do yet." For a time they were silent, looking down on to Marlow and out over the valley. "We didn't go over that hill," said Eileen, at last, pointing to the distant rise of Handy Cross. "No," replied Jasper, and then, "we won't hide behind hills. Damn public opinion." "Oh, yes, damn public opinion," agreed Eileen. "But we won't stay in Marlow always." XX--THE TERRORS OF SPRING 1 The frost gave way on the third night, and for ten days there was a spell of mild weather with some rain. Carrie Oliver began to contemplate the possibility of getting forward with such ploughing as still remained to be done. She proposed to have an increased acreage of arable that year, and less pasture, less hay and less turnips; the arable was to include potatoes, beans and peas. For the community was rapidly tending towards vegetarianism. They had no butcher in Marlow, and the women revolted against the slaughter of cattle and sheep. They were hesitating and clumsy in the attack, and so inflicted wounds which were not fatal, they turned sick at the sight of the brute's agonies and at the appalling spurts of blood, and finally when the animal was at last mercifully dead, they bungled the dissection of the carcase. "I'd sooner starve than do it again," was the invariable decision pronounced by any new volunteer who had heroically offered to provide Marlow with meat, and even Carrie Oliver admitted that it was a "beastly dirty job." "Only," she added "we'll 'ave to go on breeding calves or we won't get no milk, an' what are we goin' to do with the bullocks?"