The direct road from Salisbury to Cadover is extremely dull. The city—which God intended to keep by the river; did she not move there, being thirsty, in the reign of William Rufus?—the city had strayed out of her own plain, climbed up her slopes, and tumbled over them in ugly cataracts of brick. The cataracts are still short, and doubtless they meet or create some commercial need. But instead of looking towards the cathedral, as all the city should, they look outwards at a pagan entrenchment, as the city should not. They neglect the poise of the earth, and the sentiments she has decreed. They are the modern spirit. Through them the road descends into an unobtrusive country where, nevertheless, the power of the earth grows stronger. Streams do divide. Distances do still exist. It is easier to know the men in your valley than those who live in the next, across a waste of down. It is easier to know men well. The country is not paradise, and can show the vices that grieve a good man everywhere. But there is room in it, and leisure. “I suppose,” said Rickie as the twilight fell, “this kind of thing is going on all over England.” Perhaps he meant that towns are after all excrescences, grey fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves. But he got no response, and expected none. Turning round in his seat, he watched the winter sun slide out of a quiet sky. The horizon was primrose, and the earth against it gave momentary hints of purple. All faded: no pageant would conclude the gracious day, and when he turned eastward the night was already established. “Those verlands—” said Stephen, scarcely above his breath. “What are verlands?” He pointed at the dusk, and said, “Our name for a kind of field.” Then he drove his whip into its socket, and seemed to swallow something. Rickie, straining his eyes for verlands, could only see a tumbling wilderness of brown. “Are there many local words?” “There have been.” “I suppose they die out.” The conversation turned curiously. In the tone of one who replies, he said, “I expect that some time or other I shall marry.” “I expect you will,” said Rickie, and wondered a little why the reply seemed not abrupt. “Would we see the Rings in the daytime from here?” “(We do see them.) But Mrs. Failing once said no decent woman would have me.” “Did you agree to that?” “Drive a little, will you?” The horse went slowly forward into the wilderness, that turned from brown to black. Then a luminous glimmer surrounded them, and the air grew cooler: the road was descending between parapets of chalk. “But, Rickie, mightn’t I find a girl—naturally not refined—and be happy with her in my own way? I would tell her straight I was nothing much—faithful, of course, but that she should never have all my thoughts. Out of no disrespect to her, but because all one’s thoughts can’t belong to any single person.”