The man and woman moved up the road together. She was usually so full of things to say that her silence surprised him. The thought that his presence could possibly be agitating to her, and therefore responsible, drove the blood to his head, and then he rebuked himself for a presumptuous fool. But if he had spoken, he would have had to tell her that he loved her—and it was n't time yet. But at last he broke against the silence very quietly. “We must talk, one of us—it is so wonderfully quiet that it's alarming.” She turned round to him, and suddenly, so that he stopped in the road and looked at her, she put her hand on his arm. “We are both so frightfully young,” she said. “Why, yes,” he said, laughing at her; “but why not?” “Why, for the things that we 'll have to do. You for the boys, and I for my poor Mrs. Comber. I had thought when I saw you first that you were going to be old enough, but I don't think you are.” “I know that I can't—” he began. “Oh! it isn't for anything that you can't do!” she broke in. “It's just because you don't see it—why should you? You 're too much in the middle—I suppose it's only outsiders who can really understand. But I get so depressed sometimes with it all that I think that I will leave it and go back to London and never come here again. One doesn't seem to be any use—no use at all. And it all seems worse in the autumn somehow. Poor Mr. Traill! I always happen to be gloomy when you catch me, and I'm not gloomy really in the least.” “But what is it all about? And don't go to London, please. You mustn't think of it.” He was so much in earnest that she turned and looked at him. “Why?” she said gravely. “Do you like my being here?” And then, before he could say anything, she added, reflectively, “Well, that's one, at any rate. “I have to go in here,” she said, stopping before a gate with a drive behind it. “Tea, you understand.” Then she gave him her hand. “Although you don't in the least know what I mean, you 're a help,” she said; “and I shall look across the chapel floor in the evening and know that I have a friend. Sometimes when I'm down here—out of it—and everything's so fresh and clear, like to-night, I think that it can't be true—the things that go on. Oh! I'm so sorry for them, all of them.” She went through the gate and looked back at him. “But I don't want to have to be sorry for you as well—please,” she added, and was lost in the trees.