He thought so much of it that he was moving away without his gun, leaving it lying on the ground. It was she who reminded him. “Are you not going to take your gun?” she asked. He went back for it, covered afresh with confusion. What a stupid fellow she must think him! She waited while he fetched it, and as she waited she had a new and not unpleasant sensation. Never before had she been on these terms with a man. The men whom she had known had always taken the upper hand with her. Her father, Arthur even, had either played with her or condescended to her. In her experience it was the woman’s part to be ordered and directed, to give way and to be silent. But here the parts were reversed. This man—she had seen how he looked at her, how he humbled himself before her! And he was—interesting. As he came back to her carrying the gun, she eyed him with attention. She took note of him. He was not handsome, as Arthur was. He had not Arthur’s sparkle, his brilliance, his gay appeal, the carriage of the head that challenged men and won women. But he was not ugly, he was brown and clean and straight, and he looked strong. He bent to her as if he had been a knight and she his lady, and his eyes, grey and thoughtful—she had seen how they looked at her. Now, she had never given much thought to any man’s eyes before, and that she did so now, and criticised and formed an opinion of them, implied a change of attitude, a change in her relations and the man’s; and instinctively she acknowledged this by the lead she took. “It seems so strange,” she said half-playfully—when had she ever rallied a man before?—“that you should think of such things as you do. Snowdrops, I mean. I thought you were a banker, Mr. Ovington.” “A very bad banker,” he replied ruefully. “To tell the truth, Miss Griffin, I hate banking. Pounds, shillings, and pence—and this!” He pointed to the country about them, the stream, the sylvan path they were treading, the wood beside them, with its depths gilded here and there by a ray of the sun. “A desk and a ledger—and this! Oh, I hate them! I would like to live out of doors. I want”—in a burst of candor—“to live my own life! To be able to follow my own bent and make the most of myself.” “Perhaps,” she said with naïveté, “you would like to be a country gentleman?” And indeed the lot of a country gentleman in that day was an enviable one. “Oh no,” he said, his tone deprecating the idea. He did not aspire to that. “But what, then?” She did not understand. “Have you no ambition?” “I’d like to be—a farmer, if I had my way.” That surprised as well as dashed her. She thought of her father’s tenants and her face fell. “Oh, but,” she said, “a farmer? Why?” He was not like any farmer she had ever seen.