She assented with a sigh. She had never before talked to a man whose grandfather was a pork-butcher, and she did not know what consolation to offer. She could only look shyly and wistfully at Mr. Harding, as he leaned against the gate with his back to the prospect, while she resolved that she would never tell her uncle. She did not think her companion less interesting after the revelation. This discord, this irony of fate, this mixing of the blood of the Rothwells and the small tradesman, seemed to her to explain much of young Harding's sullen discontent. He was the last descendant of the old family of which she had dreamed so often, and he was the victim of an unmerited wrong. She wanted him to say more. "And you wouldn't come to Mitchelhurst before?" she said, suggestively. "No; but the thought of the place was pulling at me all the time. I couldn't get rid of it. And so--here I am! And I have seen the dream of my life face to face--it's behind my back just at this minute, but I can see it as well as if I were looking at it. I'm very grateful to you for showing me this view, Miss Strange, but you'll excuse me if I don't turn round while I speak of it?" "Oh, yes," said Barbara, wonderingly. He had his elbows on the top rail of the gate, and looked downward at the muddy way, rough with the hoof marks of cattle. "You see," he explained, "I want to say the kind of thing one says behind a--a landscape's back." "I'm sorry to hear it," she answered. She had drawn a little to one side, and had laid a small gloved hand on one of the gate posts. Somebody, many years before, had deeply cut a clumsy M on the cracked and roughened surface of the wood. The letter was as grey and as weather-worn as the rest. Barbara touched it delicately with a finger-tip, and followed its ungainly outline. Probably it was his own initial that the rustic had hacked, standing where he stood, but she recognised the possibility that the rough carving might be the utterance of the great secret of joy and pain, and the touch was almost a caress. "Some people follow their dreams through life, and never get more than a glimpse of them, even as dreams," said Harding, slowly. "Well, I have seen mine. I have had a good look at it. I know what it is like. It is dreary--it is narrow--cold--hideous." "Oh!" cried Barbara, as if his words hurt her. Then, recovering herself, "I'm sorry you dislike it so much. Well, you must give it up, mustn't you?" He laughed. "Life without a fancy, without a desire?" he said. "Find something else to wish for." "What? If there were anything else, should I care twopence for Mitchelhurst? No, it is my dream still--a dream I'm never likely to realise, but the only possible dream for me. Only now I know how poor and dull my highest success would be." "You had better have stayed away," said the girl. He took his elbows off the gate, and bowed in acknowledgment of the polite speech. "Oh, you know what I mean," she said hurriedly.