Now, at the age of twenty-eight, Marion found herself lonely. The farm work had become so intimate a part of her life that it served no longer to distract her. Life was slipping away from her. Ten years had passed almost without her knowing it. In another ten she would be nearly forty. A hidden fear possessed her that by separating herself from her own class and kind she had sacrificed the chance of living. Life was the thing that mattered, and she had exchanged her heritage for a few pitiful shreds of culture. The motherly cares that she lavished on Ethel were a poor substitute for veritable maternity, and she knew it. She began to see that by refusing all commerce with the men of her own class in the hope of realising a problematical grand passion she had sacrificed all opportunity of passion whatever. For some years after leaving Cheltenham she had exchanged letters with a number of her college friends, but little by little this correspondence had grown more slender and at length it had ceased. In her growing apprehension she made an attempt to revive several of these ancient friendships. The result filled her with despair and vague envies. Most of her girl friends were married: many of them sent her photographs of their husbands and children. She alone, it seemed, of all their company was left alone. It was her own fault. She knew it was her own fault, for her mirror told her that she did not show her age and that she was still desirable. All things seemed to conspire in fostering her unrest. The sights and sounds of the great farm around her were full of insistence on the cycle of birth, fruitfulness, and decay. Her books helped her no more. Her old æsthetic idols had long since been broken, and her latest passion, Whitman, whom she had discovered through the anthologies, swamped her mind with an endless adoration of the body’s pride, the splendour of the flower no less than that of the fruiting. In this distressful and desirous state, two incidents moved her deeply. The first was the dismissal of one of the farm girls who had been seduced by a clogger and had gone into the workhouse to have her baby. She was a puny, undesirable creature, with neither beauty nor health, yet she had found a lover. The second was the scandal of Mary Malpas, her old school friend, and the young lodger at Wolfpits, rehearsed with many winks by Mr Williams, whom her father had brought in for a glass of whisky on a Sunday evening. ‘A well set-up chap, that Fellows!’ said Williams to her father. ‘It’s no great wonder she’s took a fancy to him.’ ‘Well, well, ’tis the way of the world!’ said Mr Prosser comfortably. ‘Fill Mr Williams’s glass, Marion!’ She did so, and then, furiously blushing, left the room. ‘What’s up with your maid?’ Williams asked. ‘I reckon I’ve shocked her. Did I say anything out of the way?’ ‘Not you! She’s a rum ’un is Marion,’ Mr Prosser laughed.