“Yes,” said Marion, half amused at her companion’s way of putting things. “To you, I daresay it has seemed a very bright winter, and a cheerful, promising spring. After all, I believe the seasons are as much in us as outside us. Long ago I remember days on which I was so happy, that looking back, I fancy they were in the very brightest and loveliest of the summer, though in reality they were in dreary mid-winter. It is like time, which seems so short when we are happy, so long—so terribly long—when we are in sorrow. And yet in reality it is always the same. I wonder what is reality? Sometimes I think there is no outside at all.” Having arrived at which satisfactory explanation of the mystery of the sensible world, Marion remembered her companion, long ago left behind her, having, as he would have phrased it, had he been in the habit of defining him situations, “come to grief at the very first fence, on leaving the lanes.” “I wish I weren’t so stupid,” he thought to himself. “I wonder if all girls say the same queer, puzzling, pretty sort of things she does.” Not that Marion favoured many people with all the fanciful, dreamy talk—a good deal of it great nonsense, but not commonplace, as she said it, for all that —with which patient Geoffrey was honoured. But she had got into the way of saying to him—before him rather—whatever came into her head, not troubling herself as to whether he understood it or not. Rather a tame-cat way of treating him! But as he was far from resenting it, there is no occasion for us to fight his battles. To the last observation he made no reply. For some minutes they rode along the lane in silence; the horses apparently somewhat depressed in spirit, not being, like Miss Vere, dubious of the reality of an outside world, and a very foggy and disagreeable one to boot. Their feet sank, with each step, into the soft yielding mud, in great measure composed of the all but unrecognizable remains of last year’s leaves, not yet buried decently out of sight, as should have been done by this time. Nature was in a lazy mood that year. There was no sound except the thud, a ruddy, slushy sound, of the tired animals’ slow jogtrot steps. Suddenly Marion spoke again. This time in a different tone. With something of appeal, something of child-like deprecation, she turned to her companion. “Mr. Baldwin,” she said shyly, “you said just now it was almost spring. Don’t you remember promising me that by the spring you would try to do something for me?” “What, Miss Vere?” said Geoffrey, rather shortly. He knew what was coming. He had a presentiment he was going to be sorely tried between the promptings of his heart and the sound advice of his friend Veronica, to which in his inmost mind he subscribed as wise and expedient. So he answered coldly, and hated himself for so doing, while his heart was already throbbing considerably faster than usual.