"What!" he exclaimed almost fiercely, "you--do you hear it then?" "No, no, but it may come." "It shall not. The silence is so beautiful." He put his arms around her. The tears had sprung into his eyes. "How weak I am," he said, with a fury against his own condition, "you must despise me." "I love you," she said. He looked at her with a creeping astonishment. "I wonder why," he said, slowly. "How can you love a man who has been so miserable that he has almost ceased to be a man?" "I love even your misery. Don't think me selfish, Maurice. But it was your sorrow, you see, that first taught you to think of me." He leaned from her suddenly towards the window which was open and pulled it sharply up. "Why do you do that?" Lily said quickly. "One hears such noises in the air when one travels at this speed," he answered. "With the window down one might fancy anything. I must shut out fancy. There are voices in the wind that passes, in the rustling woods that we rush through. I won't hear them." The train sped on. Their destination was an inland village set in the midst of a rolling purple moor, isolated in a heather-clad gold of the land, distant from the sea, distant from the murmur of modern life; a sleepy, self-contented and serene abode of quiet women and ruminant men, living, loving, and dying with a greater calm than often pervades our modern life. A lazy divinity seemed to preside over the place, in spring-time at least. Men strolled about their work as if Time waited on them, not they on Time. The children--so Maurice thought--played more drowsily than the children of towns. The youths were contemplative. Even the girls often forgot to giggle as they thought of wedding rings and Sunday love-making. Little dogs lay blinking before the low-browed doors of the cottages, and cats reposed upon the garden walls round-eyed in sober dreams. If Maurice sought a home of silence surely he had it here. Lily and he put up at a small inn on the skirt of the village and facing the rippling emptiness of the moor. Before going to bed they stepped out into the night and the wide air. Stars were bright in the sky. Cottage lights twinkled here and there behind them in the village. They heard a stream running away into the heart of the long solitude that lay beyond them. Lily was very quiet. Her heart was full. Thoughts, strange and beautiful, overflowed in her mind. She felt just then how much bigger the human soul is than the human body, how much stronger the prisoner is than the prison in which nevertheless it is dedicated to dwell for a time. Her hand just touched the arm of Maurice as she looked across the soft darkness of the moor. He, too, felt curiously happy and safe. Taking off his cap he passed his hand over his hair.