"How deep can one go below the surface in one hundred and eighty minutes?" Eleanor seems bewildered; she is at a loss for words. "Have I only been with you so short a time?" he says incredulously. "Can it be possible?" "Does it seem long?" she asks looking down shyly. "Have I wearied you, Mr. Roche?" His smile reassures her. "It does not seem _long_, only _full_ to the brim. To every second a fresh thought, an inch deeper into the unknown." "I have never met anyone before," she declares frankly, "who spoke to me like that." Then with a swift "Good night" Eleanor breaks away and vanishes among the shadows. "A wife," says Philip to himself, "is something between a hindrance and a help. Is this the turn of the tide?" A nightingale broke into song. "Yes!" it cried; "yes--yes--yes!" CHAPTER II. "IMPARADIS'D IN ONE ANOTHER'S ARMS."--_Milton_. Eleanor is busy in the morning sunlight, brightening the pewter dinner service, the pride of the Grebby family, passed down from generation to generation, and priceless in her eyes. She can hear the preparations without for an early start to the neighbouring market. Her mother is loading a cart of vegetables, while her father "shoos" the cackling geese into wicker pens, and harnesses "Black Bess" the steady old mare, who is almost one of themselves. And Eleanor is glad that the market (a weekly centre of attraction to the old village) will leave her in peaceful solitude. She breaks out into a glad song, which mingles with the twittering of birds: "There was a jolly miller once, Lived on the River Dee." "Eleanor, Eleanor, give me a hand with these vegetables," cries her mother's voice. There is a thud, and a whole sack of potatoes fall pell-mell into the yard, still muddy from yesterday's rain. Eleanor gathers them up, indulging the same tuneful mood: "He worked and sang from morn till night. No lark more blithe than he!" She has a strong, sweet-toned voice, and "Black Bess" turns her head sleepily at the sound, whisking the tiresome flies with her tail. So often Eleanor's tread at the door of her shed has meant apples and carrots and sugar. She wipes the potatoes clean with her apron, replacing them carefully at the back of the cart. Mrs. Grebby takes the reins, while Mr. Grebby follows on foot, driving a few specially honoured sheep, who frequently serve him for conversation throughout an entire evening spent smoking with neighbouring farmers. Eleanor watches them out of sight, her hand over her brow to shade the dazzling sunlight from her eyes. A group of chickens congregate around her with mute inquiry in their beaky faces. She fetches a handful of grain from the barn, flings it into their midst, and returns singing to her pewter polishing: "And this the burden of his song For ever used to be: "How dull this soup tureen is, to be sure!" pausing in her verse to rub it with extra vigour: "I care for nobody, no not I, If no one cares for me!"