ieving that it behooved them to take in hand the repair and
reconstruction of the fabric of England. They agreed in thinking that
nature has not been generous in the endowment of our councilors. They
agreed, unconsciously, in a mute love for the muddy field through which
they tramped, with eyes narrowed close by the concentration of their
minds. At length they drew breath, let the argument fly away into the
limbo of other good arguments, and, leaning over a gate, opened their
eyes for the first time and looked about them. Their feet tingled
with warm blood and their breath rose in steam around them. The bodily
exercise made them both feel more direct and less self-conscious than
usual, and Mary, indeed, was overcome by a sort of light-headedness
which made it seem to her that it mattered very little what happened
next. It mattered so little, indeed, that she felt herself on the point
of saying to Ralph:

"I love you; I shall never love anybody else. Marry me or leave me;
think what you like of me--I don't care a straw." At the moment,
however, speech or silence seemed immaterial, and she merely clapped her
hands together, and looked at the distant woods with the rust-like bloom
on their brown, and the green and blue landscape through the steam of
her own breath. It seemed a mere toss-up whether she said, "I love you,"
or whether she said, "I love the beech-trees," or only "I love--I love."

"Do you know, Mary," Ralph suddenly interrupted her, "I've made up my
mind."

Her indifference must have been superficial, for it disappeared at
once. Indeed, she lost sight of the trees, and saw her own hand upon the
topmost bar of the gate with extreme distinctness, while he went on:

"I've made up my mind to chuck my work and live down here. I want you to
tell me about that cottage you spoke of. However, I suppose there'll
be no difficulty about getting a cottage, will there?" He spoke with an
assumption of carelessness as if expecting her to dissuade him.

She still waited, as if for him to continue; she was convinced that in
some roundabout way he approached the subject of their marriage.

"I can't stand the office any longer," he proceeded. "I don't know what
my family will say; but I'm sure I'm right. Don't you think so?"

"Live down here by yourself?" she asked.

"Some old woman would do for me, I suppose," he replied. "I'm sick of
the whole thing," he went on, and opened the gate with a jerk. They
began to cross the