He swung himself off from her and made himself a rigid figure at the window. Dan stood in the doorway. He was trying to took as if she wasn't there. "I say, aren't you coming to Reyburn?" "No, I'm not." "Why not?" "I've got a headache." "_What_?" "Headache." Outside on the flagstones she saw Nannie pass again and look in. VIII. An hour later she was sitting on the slope under the hill road of Greffington Edge. He lay on his back beside her in the bracken. Lindley Vickers. Suddenly he pulled himself up into a sitting posture like her own. She was then aware that Mr. Sutcliffe had gone up the road behind them; he had lifted his hat and passed her without speaking. "What does Sutcliffe talk to you about?" "Farming." "And what do you do?" "Listen." Below them, across the dale, they could see the square of Morfe on its platform. "How long have you lived in that place?" "Ten years. No; eleven." "Women," he said, "are wonderful. I can't think where you come from. I knew your father, I know Dan and your mother, and Victor Olivier and your aunt--" "Which aunt?" "The Unitarian lady; and I knew Mark--and Rodney. They don't account for you." "Does anybody account for anybody else?" "Yes. You believe in heredity?" "I don't know enough about it." "You should read Haeckel--_The History of Evolution_, and Herbert Spencer and Ribot's _Heredity_. It would interest you.... No, it wouldn't. It wouldn't interest you a bit." "It sounds as if it would rather." "It wouldn't.... Look here, promise me you won't think about it, you'll let it alone. Promise me." He was like Jimmy making you promise not to hang out of top-storey windows. "No good making promises." "Well," he said, "there's nothing in it.... I wish I hadn't said that about your playing. I only wanted to see whether you'd mind or not." "I don't mind. What does it matter? When I'm making music I think there's nothing but music in all the world; when I'm doing philosophy I think there's nothing but philosophy in all the world; when I'm writing verses I think there's nothing but writing in all the world; and when I'm playing tennis I think there's nothing but tennis in all the world." "I see. And when you suffer you think there's nothing but suffering in all the world." "Yes." "And when--and when--" His face was straight and serious and quiet. His eyes covered her; first her face, then her breasts; she knew he could see her bodice quiver with the beating of her heart. She felt afraid. "Then," he said, "you'll not think; you'll know." She thought: "He didn't say it. He won't. He can't. It isn't possible." "Hadn't we better go?" He sprang to his feet. "Much better," he said. IX. She would not see him again that day. Dan was going to dine with him at the Buck Hotel.