They were walking together in the Queningford fields, when Arthur stopped suddenly and turned to her. "Aggie," he said, "supposing, after all, we can never marry?" "Well," said Aggie, calmly, "if we don't we shall still lead our real life together. "But how, if we're separated?" "It would go on just the same. But we sha'n't be separated. I shall get something to do in town and live there. I'll be a clerk, or go into a shop--or something." "My darling, that would never do." "Wouldn't it, though!" "I couldn't let you do it." "Why ever not? We should see each other every evening, and every Saturday and Sunday. We should always be learning something new, and learning it together. We should have a heavenly time." But Arthur shook his head sadly. "It wouldn't work, my sweetheart. We aren't made like that." "I am," said Aggie, stoutly, and there was silence. "Anyhow," she said, presently, "whatever happens, we're not going to let it drop." "Rather not," said he, with incorruptible enthusiasm. Then, just because he had left off thinking about it, he was told that in the autumn of that year he might expect a rise. And in the autumn they were married. Aggie left the sweet gardens, the white roads and green fields of Queningford, to live in a side street in Camden Town, in a creaking little villa built of sulphurous yellow brick furred with soot. They had come back from their brilliant fortnight on the south coast, and were standing together in the atrocious bow-window of their little sitting room looking out on the street. A thick gray rain was falling, and a dust-cart was in sight. "Aggie," he said, "I'm afraid you'll miss the country." She said nothing; she was lost in thought. "It looks rather a brute of a place, doesn't it? But it won't be so bad when the rain clears off. And you know, dear, there are the museums and picture-galleries in town, and there'll be the concerts, and lectures on all sorts of interesting subjects, two or three times a week. Then there's our Debating Society at Hampstead--just a few of us who meet together to discuss big questions. Every month it meets, and you'll get to know all the intellectual people--" Aggie nodded her head at each exciting item of the programme as he reeled it off. His heart smote him; he felt that he hadn't prepared her properly for Camden Town. He thought she was mourning the first perishing of her illusions. His voice fell, humbly. "And I really think, in time, you know, you won't find it quite so bad." She turned on him the face of one risen rosy from the embraces of her dream. She put a hand on each of his shoulders, and looked at him with shining eyes. "Oh, Arthur, _dear_, it's all too beautiful. I couldn't say anything, because I was so happy. Come, and let's look at everything all over again."