softly, for fear of Clara. Edgar repeated the line in a
clear tenor. At times they both broke off to sneeze, and first one, then
the other, abused his horse.

Miriam was impatient of men. It took so little to amuse them--even Paul.
She thought it anomalous in him that he could be so thoroughly absorbed
in a triviality.

It was tea-time when they had finished.

"What song was that?" asked Miriam.

Edgar told her. The conversation turned to singing.

"We have such jolly times," Miriam said to Clara.

Mrs. Dawes ate her meal in a slow, dignified way. Whenever the men were
present she grew distant.

"Do you like singing?" Miriam asked her.

"If it is good," she said.

Paul, of course, coloured.

"You mean if it is high-class and trained?" he said.

"I think a voice needs training before the singing is anything," she
said.

"You might as well insist on having people's voices trained before you
allowed them to talk," he replied. "Really, people sing for their own
pleasure, as a rule."

"And it may be for other people's discomfort."

"Then the other people should have flaps to their ears," he replied.

The boys laughed. There was a silence. He flushed deeply, and ate in
silence.

After tea, when all the men had gone but Paul, Mrs. Leivers said to
Clara:

"And you find life happier now?"

"Infinitely."

"And you are satisfied?"

"So long as I can be free and independent."

"And you don't MISS anything in your life?" asked Mrs. Leivers gently.

"I've put all that behind me."

Paul had been feeling uncomfortable during this discourse. He got up.

"You'll find you're always tumbling over the things you've put behind
you," he said. Then he took his departure to the cowsheds. He felt he
had been witty, and his manly pride was high. He whistled as he went
down the brick track.

Miriam came for him a little later to know if he would go with Clara and
her for a walk. They set off down to Strelley Mill Farm. As they were
going beside the brook, on the Willey Water side, looking through the
brake at the edge of the wood, where pink campions glowed under a few
sunbeams, they saw, beyond the tree-trunks and the thin hazel bushes,
a man leading a great bay horse through the gullies. The big red beast
seemed to dance romantically through that dimness of green hazel drift,
away there where the air was shadowy, as if it were in the past, among
the fading bluebells that might have bloomed for Deidre or Iseult.