had seen his friend in his white duck
jacket throwing drink from glass into glass amid the din of voices and
strange accents; he had heard the clang of money as it was swept into
the till, and his sense sickened for the bar-room. But how should he
tell Margaret Dirken that he could not marry her? She had built her
life upon this marriage. He could not tell her that he would not marry
her... yet he must go. He felt as if he were being hunted; the thought
that he must tell Margaret that he could not marry her hunted him day
after day as a weasel hunts a rabbit. Again and again he went to meet
her with the intention of telling her that he did not love her, that
their lives were not for one another, that it had all been a mistake,
and that happily he had found out it was a mistake soon enough. But
Margaret, as if she guessed what he was about to speak of, threw her
arms about him and begged him to say he loved her, and that they would
be married at once. He agreed that he loved her, and that they would be
married at once. But he had not left her many minutes before the
feeling came upon him that he could not marry her--that he must go
away. The smell of the bar-room hunted him down. Was it for the sake of
the money that he might make there that he wished to go back? No, it
was not the money. What then? His eyes fell on the bleak country, on
the little fields divided by bleak walls; he remembered the pathetic
ignorance of the people, and it was these things that he could not
endure. It was the priest who came to forbid the dancing. Yes, it was
the priest. As he stood looking at the line of the hills the bar-room
seemed by him. He heard the politicians, and the excitement of politics
was in his blood again. He must go away from this place--he must get
back to the bar-room. Looking up he saw the scanty orchard, and he
hated the spare road that led to the village, and he hated the little
hill at the top of which the village began, and he hated more than all
other places the house where he was to live with Margaret Dirken--if he
married her. He could see it from where he stood--by the edge of the
lake, with twenty acres of pasture land about it, for the landlord had
given up part of his demesne land to them.

He caught sight of Margaret, and he called to her to come through the
stile.

"I have just had a letter from America."

"About the money?" she said.

"Yes, about the money. But I shall have to go over there."

He stoo