"Well, then--you'd better come away with me--to London." Even as he said it he would have caught the words back. What use for them to go? Nothing to live on, no true companionship ...there could be only one end to that. But she shook her head. "No--if you cared for me enough, mebbe I'd go. But I don't know that we'd be together long if we did. I want my own life, my own, own, own life! I can look after myself all right...I'll be off by myself alone one day." Then suddenly he wanted her as urgently as he had ever done. "No, you must never do that," he said. "If you go it must be with me. You must have some one to look after you. You don't know what London's like." He caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately, and she seemed to him a new woman altogether, created by her threat that she would go away alone. She passively let him kiss her, then with a little turn in his arms and a little sigh she very gently kissed him of her own will. "I believe I could care for 'ee," she said softly. "And I want to care for some one terrible bad." They were nearer in spirit than they had ever been before; an emotion of simple human companionship had crept into the unsettled disturbance and quieted it and deepened it. She wore in his eyes a new aspect, something wise and reasonable and comfortable. She would never be quite so mysterious to him again, but her hold on him now was firmer. He was suddenly sorry for her as well as for himself. For the first time he left her that night with a sense that comradeship might grow between them. But as he went back up the hill he was terribly depressed and humiliated. He hated and despised himself for longing after something that he did not really want. He had always, he fancied, done that, as though there would never be time enough in life for all the things that he would wish to test and to reject. When he went to bed that night he was in rebellion with all the world, but before he fell asleep Annie Hogg seemed to come to him, a gentler, kinder spirit, and to say to him, "It'll be all right.... I'll look after 'ee.... I'll look after 'ee," and he seemed to sink to sleep in her arms. Next morning Falk and Joan had breakfast alone with their father, a headache having laid Mrs. Brandon low. Falk was often late for breakfast, but to-day had woken very early, had got up and gone out and walked through the grey mist, turning his own particular trouble over and over in his mind. To-day Annie had faded back from him again; that tenderness that he had felt for her last night seemed to have vanished, and he was aware only of a savage longing to shake himself free of his burden. He had visions this morning of going up to London and looking for work....