“You know we can’t—you know as well as I do,” she replied, and her whole soul challenged him. “We have to consider things” she added. He dropped his head. He was afraid to make the struggle, to rouse himself to decide the question for her. She turned away, and went kicking through the flowers. He picked up the blossoms she had left by the nest—they were still warm from her hands—and followed her. She walked on towards the end of the field, the long strands of her white scarf running before her. Then she leaned back to the wind, while he caught her up. “Don’t you want your flowers?” he asked humbly. “No, thanks—they’d be dead before I got home—throw them away, you look absurd with a posy.” He did as he was bidden. They came near the hedge. A crab-apple tree blossomed up among the blue. “You may get me a bit of that blossom,” said she, and suddenly added—“no, I can reach it myself,” whereupon she stretched upward and pulled several sprigs of the pink and white, and put it in her dress. “Isn’t it pretty?” she said, and she began to laugh ironically, pointing to the flowers—“pretty, pink-cheeked petals, and stamens like yellow hair, and buds like lips promising something nice”—she stopped and looked at him, flickering with a smile. Then she pointed to the ovary beneath the flower, and said: “Result: Crab-apples!” She continued to look at him, and to smile. He said nothing. So they went on to where they could climb the fence into the spinney. She climbed to the top rail, holding by an oak bough. Then she let him lift her down bodily. “Ah!” she said, “you like to show me how strong you are—a veritable Samson!”—she mocked, although she had invited him with her eyes to take her in his arms. We were entering the spinney of black poplar. In the hedge was an elm tree, with myriads of dark dots pointed against the bright sky, myriads of clusters of flaky green fruit. “Look at that elm,” she said, “you’d think it was in full leaf, wouldn’t you? Do you know why it’s so prolific?” “No,” he said, with a curious questioning drawl of the monosyllable. “It’s casting its bread upon the winds—no, it is dying, so it puts out all its strength and loads its boughs with the last fruit. It’ll be dead next year. If you’re here then, come and see. Look at the ivy, the suave smooth ivy, with its fingers in the trees’ throat. Trees know how to die, you see—we don’t.” With her whimsical moods she tormented him. She was at the bottom a seething confusion of emotion, and she wanted to make him likewise. “If we were trees with ivy—instead of being fine humans with free active life—we should hug our thinning lives, shouldn’t we?” “I suppose we should.” “You, for instance—fancy _your_ sacrificing yourself—for the next generation—that reminds you of Schopenhauer, doesn’t it?—for the next generation, or love, or anything!”