Eaden’s departure was helping time to hurry. In the distance it had promised to leave things as they were before he came. But now that it was at hand it seemed a sliding away of everything. There was no depth in the morning light. She turned to survey the scene on which it fell and saw the early gold stealing faithfully towards the valley. Once Eaden had gone this thinned-out urgency of time would cease. For everyone but Vereker his going was only a removal of something grown familiar; a reminder, soon forgotten, of the movement of time. Slight reminder. He reflected only surfaces and was going away, unchanged, to reflect the surfaces of another shape of life. Yet last night he had talked. Had been less a passenger unable to take root. It was he who had been the first to subside on the stairs—with a groan for his hard day’s work. Perhaps the approach of his known life had given him a moment of clairvoyance, showing its strangeness, the strange fact of its existence. Last night had been good, was showing now how very good it had been: three friends glad to sit down together and presently talking, each voice transformed, by the approach of the separation that would make it cease to sound, to the strange marvel of a human voice. Everything said had seemed important in its kindliness, and though there had been no socialism he had talked at last of his peasants and his ceaseless fighting with their ancient ways as though he wished to excuse himself from accepting socialism, to point out its irrelevance to the life of peasant and soil. Industrial socialism had bored him. He thought its problems irrelevant, raised by clever doctrinaires who had nothing to lose. She had failed him by standing too much in one camp. The proper message for him came from the people who saw land as the fundamental unit. Tell him to look away from capital and wages. And read George. And the Jewish land-laws, never surpassed. “Good-bye. Please remember that work is an unlimited quantity.” Then she remembered that this morning there would be a meeting at breakfast. He and Vereker would be there together as on the first morning; with time to spare. But going into the dining-room she found his departure already in full swing. He was talking, smiling across at Mrs. Sneyde and Miss Hollebone with the eagerness of one who finds at the last moment the ice broken and communication flowing the more easily for having been dammed up and accumulating. Sitting down unnoticed except by Vereker she presently heard Maud Hollebone, to whom he had scarcely spoken, arranging, across the width of the room, to hasten her departure.