to
land reform from feeling, we must go into it from reason.' Then Derek
broke out: 'Walk through this country as we've walked; see the pigsties
the people live in; see the water they drink; see the tiny patches of
ground they have; see the way their roofs let in the rain; see their
peeky children; see their patience and their hopelessness; see them
working day in and day out, and coming on the parish at the end! See all
that, and then talk about reason! Reason! It's the coward's excuse, and
the rich man's excuse, for doing nothing. It's the excuse of the man who
takes jolly good care not to see for fear that he may come to feel!
Reason never does anything, it's too reasonable. The thing is to act;
then perhaps reason will be jolted into doing something.' But Sheila
touched his arm, and he stopped very suddenly. She doesn't trust us. I
shall always be being pushed away from him by her. He's just twenty, and
I shall be eighteen in a week; couldn't we marry now at once? Then,
whatever happened, I couldn't be cut off from him. If I could tell Dad,
and ask him to help me! But I can't--it seems desecration to talk about
it, even to Dad. All the way up in the train to-day, coming back home, I
was struggling not to show anything; though it's hateful to keep things
from Dad. Love alters everything; it melts up the whole world and makes
it afresh. Love is the sun of our spirits, and it's the wind. Ah, and
the rain, too! But I won't think of that! . . . I wonder if he's told
Aunt Kirsteen! . . ."

CHAPTER X

While Nedda sat, long past midnight, writing her heart out in her little,
white, lilac-curtained room of the old house above the Spaniard's Road,
Derek, of whom she wrote, was walking along the Malvern hills, hurrying
upward in the darkness. The stars were his companions; though he was no
poet, having rather the fervid temper of the born swordsman, that
expresses itself in physical ecstasies. He had come straight out from a
stormy midnight talk with Sheila. What was he doing--had been the burden
of her cry--falling in love just at this moment when they wanted all
their wits and all their time and strength for this struggle with the
Mallorings? It was foolish, it was weak; and with a sweet, soft sort of
girl who could be no use. Hotly he had answered: What business was it of
hers? As if one fell in love when one wished! She didn't know--her blood
didn't run fast enough! Sheila had retorted, "I've