"Oh! Boy," she cried, "isn't it impossible to get away from the suffering and the rottenness--even for a moment?" She shook herself as if to cast off the mood, and stretched out her arms to the open hills. "I'm sorry," she said briefly. "Come into the big spaces and tell me what you want to say. . . ." For a while they walked on over the clean-cut turf and the wind from the sea swept through the gorse and the rustling grasses, and kissed them, and passed on. "There is a hayrick, I see, girl o' mine," said Vane. "Let's go and sit under it. And in defiance of all laws and regulations we will there smoke a cigarette." They reached the sheltered side of it, and Vane threw down his coat on the ground for her to sit on. "Aren't you forgetting something?" she whispered, and he drew her into his arms and kissed her. Then he made her sit down, and arranged the coat around her shoulders. "You come in too," she ordered. "There's plenty of room for both. . . ." And so with his arm around her waist, and his cheek touching hers they sat for awhile in silence. Then suddenly Vane spoke. "Grey girl--I'm going away to-day." "Going away?" She echoed the words and stared at him incredulously. "But . . . but . . . I thought. . . ." "So did I," he returned quietly. "When I came down here yesterday I had only one thought in my mind--and that was to make you give up Baxter. I wanted it from purely selfish reasons; I wanted it because I wanted you myself. . . ." "And don't you now?" Her voice was wondering. "More--infinitely more--than I did before. But there's one thing I want even more than that--your happiness." He was staring steadily over the great stretch of open country to where Crowborough lay in the purple distance. "When you came to me last night, little Joan, I thought I should suffocate with the happiness of it. It seemed so gloriously trustful of you . . . though, I must admit that idea did not come at first. You see I'm only a man; and you're a lovely girl. . . ." He laughed a little shortly. "I'd made up my mind to drift these next two or three days, and then when you came it seemed to be a direct answer to the problem. I didn't realise just to begin with that you weren't quite capable of thinking things out for yourself. . . . I didn't care, either. It was you and I--a woman and a man; it was the answer. And then you started to cry--in my arms. The strain had been too much. Gradually as you cried and clung to me, all the tearing overmastering passion went--and just a much bigger love for you came instead of it. . . . You see, it seemed to me that you, in your weakness last night, had placed the settlement on my shoulders. . . ." "It's there now, dear man," she whispered. "I'd just got tired, tired, tired of fighting---- And last night it all seemed so clear." With her breast rising and falling quickly she stared over the hills, and Vane watched her with eyes full of love.