Hilda was afraid of his tempestuous mood. But she enjoyed her fear, as she might have enjoyed exposure to a dangerous storm. She enjoyed the sensation of her fragility and helplessness there, cooped up with him in the close intimacy of the compartment. She was glad that he did not apologize to her for his lack of restraint, nor foolishly pretend that he was boring her. "It does seem a shame!" she murmured, her eyes candidly admitting that she felt enormously flattered. He sighed and laughed. "How often have I heard my father say that--'_Ce sont des barbares_!' Peels only brought him over because they could find nobody in the Five Towns civilized enough to do the work that he did.... I can imagine how he must have felt when he first came here!... My God!... Environment!... I tell you what--it's only lately I've realized how I loathe the provinces!" The little interior in which they were, swept steadily and smoothly across the central sunlit plain of England, passing canals and brooks and cottages and churches--silent and stolid in that English stupidity that he was criticizing. And Hilda saw of George Cannon all that was French in him. She saw him quite anew, as something rather exotic and entirely marvellous. She thought: "When I first met him, I said to myself he was a most extraordinary man. And I was right. I was more right than I ever imagined. No one down there has any idea of what he really is. They're too stupid, as he says." He imposed on her his scorn of the provincial. She had to share it. She had a vision of the Five Towns as a smoky blotch on the remote horizon,--negligible, crass, ridiculous in its heavy self-complacency. The very Orgreaves themselves were tinged with this odious English provincialism. He smiled to himself, and then said, very quietly: "It isn't of the least importance, you know. In fact I'm rather glad. I've never had any difficulty in making money, and when I've settled up everything down there I shan't be precisely without. And I shall have no excuse for not branching out in a new line." She meekly encouraged him to continue. "Oh yes!" he went on. "The law isn't the only thing--not by a long way. And besides, I'm sick of it. Do you know what the great thing of the future is, I mean the really great thing--the smashing big thing?" He smiled, kindly and confidential. She too smiled, shaking her head. "Well, I'll tell you. Hotels!" "Hotels?" She was perfectly nonplussed. "Hotels! There'll be more money and more fun to be got out of hotels, soon, than out of any other kind of enterprise in the world. You should see those hotels that are going up in London! They'd give you a start, and no mistake! Yes, hotels! There aren't twenty people in England who know what a hotel is! But I know!" He paused, and added reflectively, in a comically naïve tone: "Curious how these things come to you, bit by bit! Now, if it hadn't been for Sarah--and that boarding-house--"