Meanwhile, as Laura and Hubert walked along to the desolate road that led to the great steel works, Hubert knew a kind of jealous and tormented bliss. She was there, fluttering beside him, her delicate face often turned to him, her feet keeping step with his. And at the same time what strong intangible barriers between them! She had put away her mocking tone--was clearly determined to be kind and cousinly. Yet every word only set the tides of love and misery swelling more strongly in the lad's breast. "She doan't belong to us, an there's noa undoin it." Polly's phrase haunted his ear. Yet he dared ask her no more questions about Helbeck; small and frail as she was, she could wrap herself in an unapproachable dignity; nobody had ever yet solved the mystery of Laura's inmost feeling against her will; and Hubert knew despairingly that his clumsy methods had small chance with her. But he felt with a kind of rage that there were signs of suffering about her; he divined something to know, at the same time that he realised with all plainness it was not for his knowing. Ah! that man--that ugly starched hypocrite--after all had he got hold of her? Who could live near her without feeling this pain--this pang?... Was she to be surrendered to him without a struggle--to that canting, droning fellow, with his jail of a house? Why, he would crush the life out of her in six months! There was a rush and whirl in the lad's senses. A cry of animal jealousy--of violence--rose in his being. * * * * * "How wonderful!--how enchanting!" cried Laura, her glance sparkling, her whole frame quivering with pleasure. They had just entered the great main shed of the steel works. The foreman, who had been induced by the young men to take them through, was in the act of placing Laura in the shelter of a brick screen, so as to protect her from a glowing shower of sparks that would otherwise have swept over her; and the girl had thrown a few startled looks around her. A vast shed, much of it in darkness, and crowded with dim forms of iron and brick--at one end, and one side, openings, where the June day came through. Within--a grandiose mingling of fire and shadow--a vast glare of white or bluish flame from a huge furnace roaring against the inner wall of the shed--sparks, like star showers, whirling through dark spaces--ingots of glowing steel, pillars of pure fire passing and repassing, so that the heat of them scorched the girl's shrinking cheek--and everywhere, dark against flame, the human movement answering to the elemental leap and rush of the fire, black forms of men in a constant activity, masters and ministers at once of this crackling terror round about them.