She ought, she knew, to have kept to her own side of the bridge, to have ridden on the high Downs inviting to a rider, but she loved the farther country where the air was blue and soft, where little orchards broke oddly into great fields, where brooks ran across the lanes and pink-washed cottages were fronted by little gardens full of homely flowers and clothes drying on the bushes. There was a smell of fruit and wood fires and damp earth; there was a veil of magic over the whole landscape and, far off, the shining line of the channel seemed to be washing the feet of the blue hills. The country had the charm of home with the allurement of the unknown and, within sound of the steamers hooting in the river, almost within sight of the city lying, red-roofed and smoky with factories, round the docks and mounting in terraces to the heights of Upper Radstowe, there was an expectation of mystery, of secrets kept for countless centuries by the earth which was rich and fecund and alive. She could not deny herself the sight of this country. It had become dearer to her since her awakened feelings had brought with them the complexities of new thoughts. It soothed her though it solved nothing. It did not wish to solve anything. It lay before her with its fields, its woods, its patches of heathy land, its bones of grey limestone showing where the flesh of the red earth had fallen away, its dips and hollows, its steep lanes, like the wide eye of a being too full of understanding to attempt elucidations; it would not explain; it knew but it would not impart the knowledge which must be gained through the experience of years, of storms, of sunshine, of calamity and joy. And sometimes the presence of Francis with his personal claims and his complaints was an intrusion, almost an anachronism. He was of his own time, and the end of that was almost within sight, while the earth, immensely old, had a youth of its own, something which Francis would never have again. But perhaps, because he was essentially simple, he would have fitted in well enough if he had been less ready to voice his grievances and ruffle the calm which she so carefully preserved, which he called coldness and for which he reproached her often. “I have no peace,” he grumbled. “You would get it if you would accept things as they are. You have to, in the end, so why not now?” She longed to give peace to him, but her tenderness was sane and she found a strange pleasure in the pain of knowing him to be irritable and childish. It made of her love a better thing, without the hope of any reward but the continuance of service. “It’s easier for you,” he said, and she answered, “Is it?” in the way that angered him and yet held him, and she thought, without bitterness, that he had never suffered anything without physical or mental tears. “Yes, you have peace at home, but I go back to misery.” “It’s her misery.” “That doesn’t make it any better,” he retorted justly.