empt to talk through the
clatter and roar of the train in the tunnel.

As they walked up the long hill he said,--

'You have knocked me out. I never thought any one would do that. I
never thought I should meet any one as strong as myself.... Love's a
terrible thing. The impact of two personalities. It breaks everything
else, leaves no room for anything else.'

'I hoped it would make you happy,' said Clara, accepting as entirely
natural that they should sweep aside everything that stood between them
and their desire to be together and to share thoughts, emotions, all
the deep qualities in them that could be revealed to no one else. She
could no more deny him than she could deny the sun rising in the
morning, and for the moment she was content to forget every other
element in her life.... It was so inevitably right that, having met in
the heart of London, they should turn their backs on it and put
themselves to the test of earth, sunshine, blue sky, and trees in their
summer green, and water smiling in the sun. The furious energy in
their hearts made the hot August day, the suburban scene, and the
indolent suburban people seem toy-like and unreal, as though they were
looking down upon it from another world, and so they were, for they had
plunged to the very beginnings of Creation, and their new world was in
the making. So great is the power of love that, extracting all the
truth from the world as men have made it, it sweeps the rest away and
begins again, discarding, destroying, but most tenderly preserving all
that is vital and of worth. Love takes its chosen two, and weaves a
spell about them, to preserve them from the fretting contact of the
world, that they may have the power to withstand the agony of creation
which sweeps through them, and never rests until they are forged into
one soul, one world, or parted, broken and cast down.

Of these two it was Rodd who suffered most. The fierce will that had
maintained him in his long labours for the art he worshipped would not
yield. He wanted both, his work and this sudden, surprising girl who
had walked into his life, and he wanted both upon his own terms. At
the same time the conflict set up in him made him only the more
sensitive to beauty and to the simple delights of the gardens and
fields through which they passed.... This was new for him. He had
enjoyed such things before only with a remote aesthetic detachment.

This, too, he was loath to renounc