Barbara had agreed to this, as she would have agreed to anything he had suggested, and the plan had been discussed during the summer months, till it seemed to have acquired a kind of separate existence, as if Adrian's light whim had been transformed into Destiny. The bleak little English village stood in the foreground of their radiant honeymoon picture of Paris and the south. The straggling rows of cottages, the cabbage plots, the churchyard where the damp earth, heavy with its burden of death, rose high against the buttressed wall, the blacksmith's forge with its fierce rush of sparks, the _Rothwell Arms_ with the sign that swung above the door--were all strangely distinct against a bright confusion of far-off stir and gaiety, white foreign streets, and skies and waters of deepest blue. All their lives, if they pleased, for that world beyond, but the one day, first, for Mitchelhurst. Thus it happened that the careless fancy of April was fulfilled in January. January is a month which exhibits most English scenery to small advantage; and Mitchelhurst wore its dreariest aspect when a fly from the county town drew up beneath the swaying sign. The little holiday couple, stepping out of it into the midst of the universal melancholy, looked somewhat out of place. Adrian and Barbara had that radiant consciousness of having done something very remarkable indeed which characterises newly-married pairs. They had the usual conviction that an exceptional perfection in their union made it the very flower of all love in all time. They had plucked this supremely delicate felicity, and here they were, alighting with it from the shabby conveyance, and standing in the prosaic dirt of Mitchelhurst Street. The sign gave a long, discordant creak by way of greeting, and they started and looked up. "It wouldn't be worse for a little grease," the landlord allowed, in a voice which was not much more melodious than the creaking sign. Scarlett laughed, but he realised the whole scene with an amusement which had a slight flavour of dismay. Was this the place which was to give his honeymoon an added touch of poetry? How poor and ignoble the houses were! How bare and bleak the outlines of the landscape! How low the dull, grey roof of sky! How raw the January wind upon his cheek! There was only a momentary pause. Barbara was looking down the well-known road, the bullet-headed landlord scratched his unshaven chin, and the disconsolate chickens came nearer and nearer, pecking aimlessly among the puddles. "I suppose you can give us some luncheon?" said the young man, and in the interest of that important question it hardly seemed as if there had been a pause at all.