XIV

On a spur of the Sussex Downs, inland from Nettle-Cold, there stands a
beech-grove. The traveller who enters it out of the heat and brightness,
takes off the shoes of his spirit before its, sanctity; and, reaching the
centre, across the clean beech-mat, he sits refreshing his brow with air,
and silence. For the flowers of sunlight on the ground under those
branches are pale and rare, no insects hum, the birds are almost mute.
And close to the border trees are the quiet, milk-white sheep, in
congregation, escaping from noon heat. Here, above fields and dwellings,
above the ceaseless network of men's doings, and the vapour of their
talk, the traveller feels solemnity. All seems conveying divinity--the
great white clouds moving their wings above him, the faint longing murmur
of the boughs, and in far distance, the sea.... And for a space his
restlessness and fear know the peace of God.

So it was with Miltoun when he reached this temple, three days after that
passionate night, having walked for hours, alone and full of conflict.
During those three days he had been borne forward on the flood tide; and
now, tearing himself out of London, where to think was impossible, he had
come to the solitude of the Downs to walk, and face his new position.

For that position he saw to be very serious. In the flush of full
realization, there was for him no question of renunciation. She was his,
he hers; that was determined. But what, then, was he to do? There was no
chance of her getting free. In her husband's view, it seemed, under no
circumstances was marriage dissoluble. Nor, indeed, to Miltoun would
divorce have made things easier, believing as he did that he and she were
guilty, and that for the guilty there could be no marriage. She, it was
true, asked nothing but just to be his in secret; and that was the course
he knew most men would take, without further thought. There was no
material reason in the world why he should not so act, and maintain
unchanged every other current of his life. It would be easy, usual.
And, with her faculty for self-effacement, he knew she would not be
unhappy. But conscience, in Miltoun, was a terrible and fierce thing.
In the delirium of his illness it had become that Great Face which had
marched over him. And, though during the weeks of his recuperation,
struggle of all kind had ceased, now that he had yielded to his passion,
conscience, in a new and dismal shape, had crept up again