The slight stirring of Rose's body, and a sigh so low that Arthur scarcely heard it, seemed to suggest that matters were becoming rather too deep for comprehension. The grasshopper sprung again, and this time landed upon the stile, where he remained for a long while, as though wondering what perversion of the common sense natural to grasshoppers could have prompted him to choose so barren a landing place. During the long pause Rose did not see the look of strained perplexity upon Arthur's face. "But they always get married," he said, suddenly. "The chaps in books, I mean. They always get married in the end." "Oh, Arthur!" Her hand went up to pull down his, for the moment, unwilling head. "Oh, Arthur, we will get married some day." "You're so pretty," he whispered. "You're so very beautiful." "Oh, am I? Do you think so? I'm so glad--I'm so sorry." Her tears gushed forth, inexplicably, even to Arthur, who thought he understood so much that was difficult to understand. He had let loose his feeling without any real knowledge of its depth, or that which it aroused in Rose. "I can't bear you not to have me," she sobbed. "It's cruel. It ought to be arranged. People ought to understand." Arthur was startled back to common sense. "They don't," he whispered, as they held one another in trembling arms. "If they did they would be like us." And then he remembered a possible sequel to the search for beauty. "Besides," he added, in a formal whisper, "there's the children." III Along the path that led from Bapchurch to Great Wymering there walked two persons, slowly, and with an air of having talked themselves into embarrassed silence. Their steps were gradually bringing them to the stile upon which Arthur and Rose sat. "That last remark of yours cut me to the quick," said the Doctor, at last. "I meant it to," said Lilian, firmly. "I want you to be cut to the quick. It's our only chance." "Of what?" enquired the Doctor, conscious of masculine stupidity. "Of loving somehow. Oh, don't you understand? I want to care for you, but you're making it impossible. You _will_ jest about the things sacred to me. Your flippant tongue destroys everything. It's as I said just now. I like my friends to be humorous; but my lover must be serious." "But I can't help it," pleaded the Doctor. "Take away my humour and I'm frightened at what's left of myself. There's nothing but an appalling chaos." "Because you are afraid of life," said Lilian. "Men have laughed their way through the ages; women have wept and lived. I can't share your world of assumptions and rule of thumb laws. To me love is a chaos, a dear confusion--a divine muddle. It's creation itself, an indefinite proceeding beginning with God." The Doctor harked back in his mind to the beginning of their talk. "But you objected to my house," he mused, "that was how the discussion arose. And now we've got somewhere up in the stars."