“No,” she said, not wanting his company at all, “stay here and begin to dig the garden.” She smiled. She was anxious to get away. Not until she was out in the lanes would she again breathe freely. She went without any appearance of hurry, thanking Calladine, who tore from his solitary rose-bush all the branches he could crowd into her arms, and climbed back into the gig as she had come. He saw her go, despair and joy and anguish rending him. The strain and anxiety of being with Calladine drove her, as always, towards the wish to be with Lovel. “Brother,” she could have called him, from the ease of his companionship. She could have put her hand into his, simply for the trust she had in him. But she knew too well that the indifference of his greeting would repulse instantly any such movement of confidence on her part; he would glance at her, when they met, and his glance would take her back into the assurance of their old intimacy, but there would be no softening of sentiment in it. Never that; a challenge and a bracing, but never compassion or a caress. Could she ever go with a trouble to Lovel? Her instinct leapt up into an affirmative; he would listen gravely, would understand without commiserating, would counsel quietly, and would fortify her with a sense of his reliance in her trustworthiness. He would trust her to behave always as he would expect that she should behave. She would endure anything rather than disappoint Lovel. More: even in his absence, even though he should know nothing of it, she kept herself constantly up to the level of his standards. She winced at any thought of his possible disapproval. She had not for him, nor could she imagine herself having, the indulgent and,--school herself to reverence as she would,--contemptuous pity she had for Calladine; what had she told Calladine to do? to grow lupin and iris, tulips and honesty, sweet sultan and snapdragons, in a walled patch of what had once been Down-land! to _wall_ the Down? was it possible that she had told him to wall in the Down? what gulf she must divine between him and herself, between him and the Down-country in which he had elected to live, if she could tell him to wall in the Down. Yes, even a square, a stray square of Down, forgotten between a lane and Starvecrow’s farm-house. What would Lovel say, if she told him that? True, Lovel himself was sometimes set on to plough the Down, and willingly proceeded with the task; but that was different: that was the old struggle between man and the soil from which he wrested his daily bread; Lovel would tame the Down to grow barley for man or roots for his cattle,--a poor crop at best, extorted from the recalcitrant soil, like charity from an irreconcilable spirit, a poor crop, flaunting red poppies for its last flag of insubordination,--Lovel would plough the Down for that purpose, and relish the tussle, meeting in mutual understanding an adversary as stubborn as he himself; but for his mere pleasure he would not wall in