There were thrown together in Rollo and Percival very notable examples of these hazards in nature's crucibles. The complete and most successful male was precipitated in him of whom Japhra had said long days before: "I know the fighting type. Mark me when the years come. A fighter thou." Qualities of woman were alloyed in him who once had cried: "Men don't talk about these things, Percival, so I've never told you all you are to me--but it's a fact that I'm never really happy except when I'm with you." Strongly their natures therefore cleaved, devotedly and with a clinging fondness on the weaker part; on the bolder, protectively and with the tenderness that comes responsive from knowledge of the other's dependence. "Men don't talk about these things--but I'm never really happy except when I'm with you." That diffidence at sentiment and that self-exposure despite it, made when Percival, off to join Japhra, seemed to be passing out of his life, were repeated fondly and many times by Rollo now that Percival looked to be back in his life again. "Hearing me talk like this," he told Percival, "it makes you rather squirm, I expect--the sort of chap you are. But I can't help it and I don't care," and he laughed--"the sort of chap I am. You don't know--you can't come near guessing, old man, what it means to me to think you've chucked all that mad gipsy life of yours that might have ended in anything, the rummy thing it was, and that kept you utterly away from me; to think you've chucked all that and are settled down in a business that really is a good thing, every one says it is, and any one can see it. It means to me--well, I can't tell you what, you'd only laugh. But I can tell you this much, that I do nothing but think, and all the time I'm away shall be thinking, of how we'll both be down here always now when I get back, and of all the things we'll do together." They were riding as he spoke, their horses at a walk up the steady climb of the down to Plowman's Ridge from Market Roding. His voice on his last sentence had taken an eager, impulsive note, and as though he had a sudden suspicion that it was betraying an undue degree of sentiment he stopped abruptly, his face a trifle red. It was his confusion, not any excess of sentiment, that Percival--quick as of old in sympathy with another's feelings--noticed. He edged his horse nearer Rollo's and touched Rollo with his whip. "Yes, we're going to have a great, great time, aren't we?" he said. "I'm only just beginning to realise it--great, Rollo!"