“The little people! Are we to be little because they are shorter than we are? The neighbourhood knows me well enough.” She came forward again to the window with a kind of tender and stooping pity. “Jim, how very innocent you are. Yes, I know—I know it is precious, and perilous. Listen! Supposing you were to lose Lynette—oh, why will you make me say the mean, hideous things?” “Lose Lynette! Do you mean——” “Jim, I am going to shut the window.” He raised an arm. “Wait! Good God!” “No, no! Good night!” She closed the window, and dragged the curtains across it. Canterton stood at gaze a moment, before walking away across the grass. Eve was listening, stricken, yet trying not to feel afraid. * * * * * CHAPTER XVII LYNETTE INTERPOSES At such a parting of the ways, Canterton’s elemental grimness showed itself. He was the peasant, sturdy, obstinate, steady-eyed, ready to push out into some untamed country, and to take and hold a new domain. For under all his opulent culture and his rare knowledge lay the patient yet fanatical soul of the peasant. He was both a mystic and a child of the soil, not a city dweller, mercurial and flippant, a dog at the heels of profit and loss. Eve had talked of the impossible, but when he took Lynette by the hand and went down with her into the Wilderness, Canterton could not bring himself to play the cynic. Sitting in the bracken, and watching Lynette making one of her fairy fires, he felt that it was Eve’s scepticism that was impossible, and not his belief in a magnanimous future. He was so very sure of himself that he felt too sure of other people. His name was not a thing to be made the sport of rumour. Men and women had worked together before now; and did the world quarrel with a business man because he kept a secretary or a typist? Moreover, he believed himself to be different from the average business man, and what might have meant lust for one spoke of a sacrament to the other. “Daddy, why didn’t Miss Eve come yesterday?” “She had work at home, Princess.” “And to-day too?” “It seems so.” “Why don’t we go and see her, then?” “Why not?” The mouth of the child had offered an inspiration. Was it possible to look into Lynette’s eyes and be scared by sinister suggestions? Why, it was a comradeship of three, not of two. They were three children together, and perhaps the youngest was the wisest of the three. “Lynette, come here, old lady! Miss Eve thinks of going away.” “Miss Eve going away?” “Yes.” “Oh, no, daddy, how can she?” “Well, one has only to get into a train, even if it be a train of thought.” Lynette was kneeling between her father’s knees. “I’ll ask her not to go.” “You might try it.” “Oh, yes, let’s! Let’s go down to Orchards Corner now—at once!”