Oh, wonderful beneath this imperturbable sky, amongst these common, passive things--these paths, those trees, that grass, this bench--within this seclusion of that murmurous investment of this city, the ceaseless roar of London, standing like patient walls, eternal and indifferent, about her quietudes. Oh, wonderful in these accustomed and insensible surroundings thus to be calling “Harry,” as he were brother, him that a day and night away virtually was unmet; to be exposing, as to a gracious patron, all her mind’s treasury of thought; to be revealing, as in confessional, her inmost places of her heart; to be receiving, as by transfusion, the glow of affirmation on her way and in her trust. Oh, wonderful! Wonderful, because remember for her that she was still beneath the shock of her dismay at her betrayal of herself; still breathless at that rout from her prepared positions; not yet assured her banners were unsullied in their withdrawal to her second line; not yet convinced it was no rout but a withdrawal, wise and strategical, ranks unbroken, to the true point of her defence. Do try to imagine her, tremulous in this her vital enterprise, tremulous in this wonder that her armies found. It is very desirable to remember what can be remembered for that girl. CHAPTER III Harry assured her! Harry convinced her! Harry was here upon the battlements, come with her in her retirement, joined with her as her ally. All her ideas were his ideas. He, too, had these new views of marriage. He said they always had been his. He hated, as she hated, that old dependence notion: all the privileges the man’s, the woman’s all the duties. That was detestable to him, said Harry. Marriage in his view-- “I’ll tell you this,” was one thing Harry said. “I’ll show it to you this way, Rosalie. I don’t exactly know what a reciprocating machine is, but I know what it sounds like, and what it sounds like is what a marriage ought to be,--a perfect fitting together, a perfect harmonising, a perfect joining of two perfect halves that everywhere reciprocate.” The word delighted her. A reciprocating machine! Yes, yes! Each an own part; each with own and separate interests; and their parts, and the production arising out of their interests--their individual selves--approached together, by free will, to join towards a mutual benefit, a shared endeavour, a common advancement, a single end. She was desperately in earnest and so was he. There was a mill near his people’s home in Sussex, a water mill, and his illustration by it of the design they had showed her how earnestly her own ideas were his. There were two wheels to this mill, Harry told her, one on either side. Each ran in its own stream, each was entirely independent of the other; they worked alone, but each helped the other’s work; the mill joined them and they joined to make the mill. That was it!