r hand more firmly; even as
he did so something in his heart reproached him, but now the reproach
was very far away, like an echo of some earlier voice.

"Do you know you're a wonderful girl?" he said. "I knew you were from
the first moment I saw you. You're the most independent person I've
ever known. You can't guess how I admire that! And all the same you're
not happy, are you? You want to get out of it, don't you?"

She thought for a little while before she nodded her head.

"I suppose as a fact." she said, "I do. If you want to know--and you
mustn't tell anybody--I've posted a letter to a lady whom I met once
who told me if ever I wanted anything to write to her. I've asked her
for some work. I've got three hundred pounds of my own. It isn't very
much, I know, but I could start on it ... I don't want to do wrong to
my aunts, who are very kind to me, but I'm not happy there. It wouldn't
be true to say I'm happy. You see," she dropped her voice a little,
"they want to make me religious, and I've had so much of that with
father already. I feel as though they were pressing me into it somehow,
and that I should wake up one morning and find I should never escape
again. There's so much goes on that I don't understand. And it isn't
only the chapel. Aunt Anne's very quiet, but she makes you feel quite
helpless sometimes. And perhaps one will get more and more helpless the
longer one stays. I don't want to be helpless ever--nor religious!" she
ended.

"Why, that's just my position," he continued eagerly. "I came home as
happily as anything. I'd almost forgotten all that had been when I was
a boy, how I was baptized and thought I belonged to God and was so
proud and stuck up. That all seems nonsense when you're roughing it
with other men who think about nothing but the day's work. Then I came
home meaning to settle down. I wanted to see my governor too. I've
always cared for him more than any one else in the world ... but I tell
you now I simply don't know what's going on at home. They want to catch
me in a trap. That's what it feels like. To make me what I was as a
kid. It's strange, but there's more in it than you'd think. You
wouldn't believe the number of times I've thought of my young days
since I've been home. It's as though some one was always shoving them
up in front of my face. All I want, you know, is to be jolly. To let
other people alone and be let alone myself. I wouldn't do any one any
harm in the world--I wo