w. I think you
might."

Nedda flushed from sheer joy. "I could never go on if I didn't love. I
feel I couldn't, even if I'd started."

With another long look through narrowing eyes, Kirsteen answered:

"Yes. You would want truth. But after marriage truth is an unhappy
thing, Nedda, if you have made a mistake."

"It must be dreadful. Awful."

"So don't make a mistake, my dear--and don't let him."

Nedda answered solemnly:

"I won't--oh, I won't!"

Kirsteen had turned away to the window, and Nedda heard her say quietly
to herself:

"'Liberty's a glorious feast!'"

Trembling all over with the desire to express what was in her, Nedda
stammered:

"I would never keep anything that wanted to be free--never, never! I
would never try to make any one do what they didn't want to!"

She saw her aunt smile, and wondered whether she had said anything
exceptionally foolish. But it was not foolish--surely not--to say what
one really felt.

"Some day, Nedda, all the world will say that with you. Until then we'll
fight those who won't say it. Have you got everything in your room you
want? Let's come and see."

To pass from Becket to Joyfields was really a singular experience. At
Becket you were certainly supposed to do exactly what you liked, but
the tyranny of meals, baths, scents, and other accompaniments of the
'all-body' regime soon annihilated every impulse to do anything but
just obey it. At Joyfields, bodily existence was a kind of perpetual
skirmish, a sort of grudged accompaniment to a state of soul. You might
be alone in the house at any meal-time. You might or might not have
water in your jug. And as to baths, you had to go out to a little
white-washed shed at the back, with a brick floor, where you pumped on
yourself, prepared to shout out, "Halloo! I'm here!" in case any one
else came wanting to do the same. The conditions were in fact almost
perfect for seeing more of one another. Nobody asked where you were
going, with whom going, or how going. You might be away by day or night
without exciting curiosity or comment. And yet you were conscious of
a certain something always there, holding the house together; some
principle of life, or perhaps--just a woman in blue. There, too, was
that strangest of all phenomena in an English home--no game ever played,
outdoors or in.

The next fortnight, while the grass was ripening, was a wonderful time
for Nedda, given up to her single passion--of seeing more of him w