In the afternoon our two wanderers rode on at an easy pace towards Stoney Cross. Conversation languished, the topic of South Africa being in abeyance. Mr. Hoopdriver was silenced by disagreeable thoughts. He had changed the last sovereign at Ringwood. The fact had come upon him suddenly. Now too late he was reflecting upon his resources. There was twenty pounds or more in the post office savings bank in Putney, but his book was locked up in his box at the Antrobus establishment. Else this infatuated man would certainly have surreptitiously withdrawn the entire sum in order to prolong these journeyings even for a few days. As it was, the shadow of the end fell across his happiness. Strangely enough, in spite of his anxiety and the morning’s collapse, he was still in a curious emotional state that was certainly not misery. He was forgetting his imaginings and posings, forgetting himself altogether in his growing appreciation of his companion. The most tangible trouble in his mind was the necessity of breaking the matter to her. A long stretch up hill tired them long before Stoney Cross was reached, and they dismounted and sat under the shade of a little oak tree. Near the crest the road looped on itself, so that, looking back, it sloped below them up to the right and then came towards them. About them grew a rich heather with stunted oaks on the edge of a deep ditch along the roadside, and this road was sandy; below the steepness of the hill, however, it was grey and barred with shadows, for there the trees clustered thick and tall. Mr. Hoopdriver fumbled clumsily with his cigarettes. “There’s a thing I got to tell you,” he said, trying to be perfectly calm. “Yes?” she said. “I’d like to jest discuss your plans a bit, y’know.” “I’m very unsettled,” said Jessie. “You are thinking of writing Books?” “Or doing journalism, or teaching, or something like that.” “And keeping yourself independent of your stepmother?” “Yes.” “How long’d it take now, to get anything of that sort to do?” “I don’t know at all. I believe there are a great many women journalists and sanitary inspectors, and black-and-white artists. But I suppose it takes time. Women, you know, edit most papers nowadays, George Egerton says. I ought, I suppose, to communicate with a literary agent.” “Of course,” said Hoopdriver, “it’s very suitable work. Not being heavy like the drapery.” “There’s heavy brain labour, you must remember.” “That wouldn’t hurt _you_,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, turning a compliment. “It’s like this,” he said, ending a pause. “It’s a juiced nuisance alluding to these matters, but—we got very little more money.” He perceived that Jessie started, though he did not look at her. “I was counting, of course, on your friend’s writing and your being able to take some action to-day.” ‘Take some action’ was a phrase he had learnt at his last ‘swop.’ “Money,” said Jessie. “I didn’t think of money.”