in the soul of the other. So vivid was the call, so absurd the refusal, that as they reached the point above the trees of the Manor House garden, Lovel stood still and laughed out loud. “So you go back to rooms,” he said, and laughed again, but more bitterly. “You!” he said, charged with contempt. They were closer in understanding than ever they had been in their lives. He began to speak low and rapidly, “Clare,” he said, “there is no more softness in you or in me than there is in this soil. There is no flabby flesh, only bone. No trappings, only the hard skeleton. We’ve pared away.... If I had not taken shelter in the beechwood,--and it was the nearest approach to shelter I could get,--I might have taken you by the hand and galloped away with you; you would have come. That would have been mad. I have got my mother and Olver, and not only that, but I’ve got their blood in me. I want to have sons, and I may not, because of that blood. That was why I said I envied Calladine having only himself to overcome, when here am I as hard as flint, who might beget sons with that soft squelch in them that has rotted Olver. A bad stock, I said to myself; be strong; let it die out. And then the irony ... well, you know nothing about that, and even that seems not to matter now. Never be surprised, now, if you hear that I have been borne a son or a daughter, only don’t judge me too harshly. But how could I have brought you to my mother and Olver? and our children, yours and mine,--how could I, Clare? What chance had I but to cease from seeing you? Oh, if it had not been for them and my blood, then there would have been the Downs for you and me, Clare. Don’t share the Downs with Calladine; he lives among them, but he isn’t strong enough to endure them. There are some countries that it takes a strong man to endure. They don’t generate strength, and they crush weakness. Calladine should have lived in towns. But now that he has got you he may be rescued.” “You know that Mr. Calladine has not got me, and never will have me, except in name,” said Clare. “That’s true,” replied Lovel, not disputing her statement. “Let him live with you by his side, you listening, listening patiently, for as long as he chooses to discourse, and looking at him with the eyes of a stranger. I don’t say that I envy him. (“How you despise him!” she breathed.) And yet,” he said, “don’t I envy him a little? Can I help myself? He will see you every day, he will be able to call your name through the house at any moment and hear your answer. Don’t I envy him that? Wouldn’t I change places with him for that?--But he’ll tire of you, perhaps,” he added, dropping from his sudden anguish into the old whimsicality, “tire of you even though he has never got you. No, I don’t envy him. I’ll be less lonely,” he said with a fine insolence, “than he.” “I must go, Lovel,” cried Clare. He stepped back from her instantly.