shook her head. "It will last!" she said; "Nedda's deep."

And if Nedda held, so would Fate; no one would throw Nedda over! They
naturally both felt that. 'Dionysus at the Well,' no less than 'The Last
of the Laborers,' had a light week of it.

Though in a sense relieved at having parted with her secret, Nedda yet
felt that she had committed desecration. Suppose Derek should mind her
people knowing!

On the day that he and Sheila were to come, feeling she could not trust
herself to seem even reasonably calm, she started out, meaning to go to
the South Kensington Museum and wander the time away there; but once
out-of-doors the sky seemed what she wanted, and, turning down the hill
on the north side, she sat down under a gorse bush. Here tramps, coming
in to London, passed the night under the stars; here was a vision,
however dim, of nature. And nature alone could a little soothe her
ecstatic nerves.

How would he greet her? Would he be exactly as he was when they stood at
the edge of Tod's orchard, above the dreamy, darkening fields, joining
hands and lips, moved as they had never been moved before?

May blossom was beginning to come out along the hedge of the private
grounds that bordered that bit of Cockney Common, and from it, warmed by
the sun, the scent stole up to her. Familiar, like so many children of
the cultured classes, with the pagan and fairy-tales of nature, she
forgot them all the moment she was really by herself with earth and sky.
In their breadth, their soft and stirring continuity, they rejected
bookish fancy, and woke in her rapture and yearning, a sort of long
delight, a never-appeased hunger. Crouching, hands round knees, she
turned her face to get the warmth of the sun, and see the white clouds go
slowly by, and catch all the songs that the birds sang. And every now
and then she drew a deep breath. It was true what Dad had said: There
was no real heartlessness in nature. It was warm, beating, breathing.
And if things ate each other, what did it matter? They had lived and
died quickly, helping to make others live. The sacred swing and circle
of it went on forever, full and harmonious under the lighted sky, under
the friendly stars. It was wonderful to be alive! And all done by love.
Love! More, more, more love! And then death, if it must come! For,
after all, to Nedda death was so far away, so unimaginably dim and
distant, that it did not really count.

While she sat, lettin