hem violently.

Nevertheless, she might grow old on the moor and marry Daniel in
despair. She shuddered. No one could love Daniel enough to pardon his
appearance, and amusement would soon change to hatred. She tormented
herself with pictures of their common life. She saw his shapeless
clothes lying about the room she had to share with him; his boots stared
up at her from the hall with much of his own expression. She heard him
talking legally to her through their meals and saw him gazing at her
with his peculiar, timid worship. But if they had children, they would
have Daniel's stamp on them, and then he would grow bold and take all
she gave for granted. Girls and boys alike, they would be big and gaunt
and clumsy, but considerate and good.

She threw her arms across her breast and held herself in a fury of
self-possession. Marriage suddenly appeared to her as an ugly thing even
if it attained to the ideal. No, no! Men were good to play with, to
tease and torture, but she had fixed her limits, and she fixed them with
some astonishment for her own reserve. The discovery of this inherent
coldness had its effect: it bounded her future in a manner which was too
disturbing for much contemplation, but it also gave her a new freedom of
action, assuring her that she need have no fears for her own restraint,
that when her chance came, she might go into the world like a Helen of
Troy who could never be beguiled. In the meantime, though she had
quarrelled with George Halkett, she remembered that she had not forsworn
his company; she had only sworn to punish him for having told the truth,
and she easily pretended not to know that her resentment was no more
than an excuse.

She swung herself to her feet, and not without fear, for the moor had
never been her friend, she walked quickly towards the patch of darkness
made by the larch-trees. "I am being driven to this," she thought
dramatically and with the froth of her mind. She went with her head held
tragically high, but in her throat, where humour met excitement, there
was a little run of laughter.

The trees stood without movement, as though they were weighted by
foreknowledge and there was alarm in the voice of the stream. She
stopped short of the water and stood by the brown path that led down to
the farm, and her feet could feel the softness of many falls of larch
needles. She listened and she could hear nothing but the small noises of
the wood and all round it the moor was l