r furniture," she said suddenly. "And those
ornaments are ugly."

He took them from the mantelpiece and threw them into the waste-paper
basket.

"Anything else? It won't hold the furniture."

"Ah, you're nice," she said, and, going to the window, she looked out on
the garden, where the apple-trees twisted themselves out of a rough
lawn.

"When you marry me," Zebedee said, standing beside her and speaking
quietly, "we'll leave this house to Daniel and Eliza. There's one
outside the town, on the moor road, but set back in a big garden, a
square house. Shall we--shall we go and look at it?"

"Shall we?" she repeated, and they faced each other unsmiling.

"It's an old house, with big square windows, and there's a rising copse
behind it."

"I know," Helen said.

"There's a little stream that falls into the road."

"Does it run inside the garden?"

"That's what I'm not sure about."

"It must."

He put his hand on her shoulder. "We could peep through the windows. Are
you coming?"

"I don't know," she said and there was a fluttering movement in her
throat. "Don't you think it's rather dangerously near the road?"

"We could lock the gate," he said.

She dropped her face into her hands. "No, I can't come. I'm afraid. It's
tempting things to happen."

"It has been empty for a long time," he went on in the same quiet tones.
"I should think we could get it cheap."

She looked up again. "And I shall have a hundred pounds a year. That
would pay the rent and keep the garden tidy."

He turned on her sharply. "Mind, I'm going to buy your clothes!"

"I can make them all," she said serenely. She leaned against him. "We
love each other--and we know so little about each other. I don't even
know how old you are!"

"I'm nearly thirty-one."

"That's rather old. You must know more than I do."

"I expect I do."

A faint line came between her eyebrows. "Perhaps you have been in love
before."

"I have." His lips tightened at the memory.

"Very much in love?"

"Pretty badly."

"Then I hope she's dead!"

"I don't know."

"I can't bear her to be alive. Oh, Zebedee, why didn't you wait for
me?"

"I should have loved you less, child."

"Would you? You never loved her like this?"

"She wasn't you."

In a little while she said, "I don't understand love. Why should we
matter so much to each other? So much that we're afraid? Or do we only
think we do? Perhaps that's it. It can't matter so much as we make out,