The snow lay deeper than ever, after another heavy fall, upon the Downs, but although still a prisoner her restlessness had left her: the life she had wanted came now to her from without. Olver brought that life; he brought tumult, anguish, but it was life that he brought, besieging her. And although he was not Lovel’s envoy, still it was straight from Lovel that he came. His eyes, as they flamed on Clare, an hour earlier had been filled with Lovel; she could fancy Lovel’s image still lingering in them. And after he had left her, it was to Lovel’s presence that he would return; he would hear Lovel’s voice and see Lovel’s hands, that so haunted her. Once she broke her silence to ask about Lovel, “What does he do, these days of snow? does he get out? stay at home?” and Olver answered, “To-day he has been twisting new snares, and last night he brought home a lamb that still lies by our fire.” She knew that an end must come; beleaguered, she knew that. She had pushed life away, but it had followed her, even into her retreat. It was useless; Calladine was not life; his need of her had not been life. He was a shadow, a man of pretence, sufficient to himself, with his own pretences for company. It was only the true solitaries, the really lonely people, like Lovel, who had absolute need of their chosen loves. The strong, clamping loves, that fastened on to one another, to lose their hold only when they lost their hold on life; the unalterable, ordained loves. She could not justify the argument; her selfishness towards Calladine remained unjustified. But she knew that that would not weigh with her; she and Lovel would reach one another when the day came, even through a stone wall. Still she could not justify it. She tried to, perfunctorily. She sat frowning, and saying the words over to herself. Selfishness, duty. They remained mere words; she could not feel them in her blood, as she felt her need for Lovel and Lovel’s need for her; they were words pitted against instinct. Was it love, that need? Was it no more than that ordinary miracle, love? She thought that it was more. They had the Downs as a bond between them; the Downs, and all nature, of which Lovel seemed the spirit, the incarnation. He was the darkness of the Downs, their threat, their solitude, their intractability; she was their light, their windiness, their sunlit flanks, their springiness of turf. United, they formed a whole. There was an essential significance in Lovel, as there was an essential insignificance in Calladine.