It was on those evenings, and while Mrs. Barton knitted socks which he knew well enough would be offered to himself, that Mr. Vincent noticed the disappearance, first of crape and then of black in the widow's dress. He saw, too, the little arts, such as an odd bit of finery and the management of her hair by which she strove to add to her attractions, and he never pretended to himself that he misunderstood them. He realized, too, the good points of her figure--the set-back of her shoulders, and that she was tall and had a certain presence, even dignity, born of adherence to simple rules of life. And somehow, in a quiet, unexcited way, he became fascinated. Here was the natural human being, he thought, as God had meant it to be, unadulterated by scholarship or passion or knowledge of the world. He felt that he and she and nature made a trinity framed by the Surrey hills and all the beautiful country round them. He wanted no other home than the farm, no other method of getting about than the brown, wooden cart and the broken-winded cob, no other companion than this sedate woman who knew nothing of his history or inward life, yet who somehow gave all his thoughts a setting, and put him into moods that helped him to write down many things that he hoped some day to give to the world. It is difficult to say how these things come about, or what will lead a man and woman knowing little of each other to marry; but the unaccountable happens too often to need dilating upon, and the great facts of life that stare us in the face occasionally make in themselves a grotesque argument in favor of spontaneous generation. Thus it happened that one night, after a long silence, Gerald Vincent said, quite simply: "Mrs. Barton, I have been wondering lately whether it is right of me to go on staying at the farm on our present footing?" "Why, Mr. Vincent!" She looked up at him with her pure, grave eyes, and surprise was in her voice. "I'm sure, if James knew, he'd like to feel that you were here." "I wonder if he would; I have heard that he was a godly man, and I am not." "Don't say that," she answered, anxiously. "I've always held with doing what was right rather than with the saying of prayers, though James's people, of course, are different and very strict in their notions." "You know nothing about me," he said, going on with his own train of thoughts, "of my family, nor my doings before I came here, and yet I have been wondering if you would marry me?" It did not seem necessary to him to tell her that his father had been a peer, or that his brother had made a foolish marriage and gone to the Antipodes, or that he himself had thrown over the church and wrecked his prospects on a metaphysical rock. These things, and knowledge of them, were so far outside her world and thoughts that telling her could serve no good end. It was better to be silent.