e of."

"Do you think it's quite fair?"

"Isn't it what they would want themselves? It's the only possible
thing we can do. And also," he added quietly, "it will give a certain
interest to next Easter."

But there was no need to beg a holiday for Freda. In February, when
the winds came driving up the Channel and brought to England a
month-long burden of rain and sleet, her health gave way again and she
was warned that she was not strong enough for the wear and tear of an
office life. For most people it is true that colds are not liable to
the laws of cause and effect: they happen or they don't and to be
soaked to the skin is no more fatal than to bask in the sun. But for
Freda to arrive at the office with feet wet and cold meant certain
visitation. And by six o'clock she was always worn out. Now she would
have to rely on an uncle and aunt. The uncle had money and had offered
already to release Freda from the misery of work, but she had refused,
so intolerable had seemed his great Victorian mansion on Sheffield's
edge. She had wanted, in her youthful courage, to work and to be free.
But now there was no use in fighting and she yielded partly from a
consideration of hard fact, partly because her uncle had retired from
his business and was coming to London. Idleness in town with an
allowance! By privation she had been taught the meaning and the value
of both. So it was as a woman of moderate means and unlimited leisure
that Freda came to The Steading for Easter.

Martin came from Oxford jaded and tired out. He had had to work hard
in order to make up for a vacation of complete indolence. The wet
February had brought floods and stinted exercise and despondency: it
had been tedious work, toiling over a new language in those lonely Ship
Street rooms. His soul hungered for sympathy, his body for the
infinite swell and splendour of the moor and for the cold sting of the
winds that whirled across it like the thongs of a lash.

For a week he stayed about the house and strolled in the near woods
with Freda, whose recent illness had left her far too weak for real
walking. She hadn't the strength nor could she risk a strain or chill.
So Martin lingered with her all day, while they built fantastic castles
of hopes and visions. Then the inactivity grew intolerable to his
body, tore at his nerves, and made him ravenous for the moor and the
golf-links. Freda despised golf and could not understand how any sane
p