he scent of hay was everywhere. What about those poor devils
of laborers, now? They would get the sack for this! and he was suddenly
beset with a feeling of disgust. This world where men, and women too,
held what they had, took what they could; this world of seeing only one
thing at a time; this world of force, and cunning, of struggle, and
primitive appetites; of such good things, too, such patience, endurance,
heroism--and yet at heart so unutterably savage!

He was very tired; but it was too wet to sit down, so he walked on. Now
and again he passed a laborer going to work; but very few in all those
miles, and they quite silent. 'Did they ever really whistle?' Felix
thought. 'Were they ever jolly ploughmen? Or was that always a fiction?
Surely, if they can't give tongue this morning, they never can!' He
crossed a stile and took a slanting path through a little wood. The
scent of leaves and sap, the dapple of sunlight--all the bright early
glow and beauty struck him with such force that he could have cried out
in the sharpness of sensation. At that hour when man was still abed and
the land lived its own life, how full and sweet and wild that life
seemed, how in love with itself! Truly all the trouble in the world came
from the manifold disharmonies of the self-conscious animal called Man!

Then, coming out on the road again, he saw that he must be within a mile
or two of Becket; and finding himself suddenly very hungry, determined to
go there and get some breakfast.

CHAPTER XXXI

Duly shaved with one of Stanley's razors, bathed, and breakfasted, Felix
was on the point of getting into the car to return to Joyfields when he
received a message from his mother: Would he please go up and see her
before he went?

He found her looking anxious and endeavoring to conceal it.

Having kissed him, she drew him to her sofa and said: "Now, darling, come
and sit down here, and tell me all about this DREADFUL business." And
taking up an odorator she blew over him a little cloud of scent. "It's
quite a new perfume; isn't it delicious?"

Felix, who dreaded scent, concealed his feelings, sat down, and told her.
And while he told her he was conscious of how pathetically her
fastidiousness was quivering under those gruesome details--fighting with
policemen, fighting with common men, prison--FOR A LADY; conscious too
of her still more pathetic effort to put a good face on it. When he had
finished she remained so pe