ef. We looked together across the steep gorge at the
blue ridge of trees beyond. "Anyone," she said, "might have seen us this
minute."

"I never thought," I said, and moved a foot away from her.

"It's too late if they have," said she, pulling me back to her. "Over
beyond there, that must be Hindhead. Someone with a telescope----!"

"That's less credible," I said. And it occurred to me that the grey
stretch of downland beyond must be the ridge to the west of
Ridinghanger.

"I wish," I said, "it didn't matter. I wish I could come and go and
fear nobody--and spend long hours with you--oh! at our ease."

"Now," she said, "we spend short hours. I wonder if I would like----
It's no good, Stephen, letting ourselves think of things that can't be.
Here we are. Kiss that hand, my lover, there, just between wrist and
thumb--the little hollow. Yes, exactly there."

But thoughts had been set going in my mind. "Why," I said presently,
"should you always speak of things that can't be? Why should we take all
this as if it were all that there could be? I want long hours. I want
you to shine all the day through on my life. Now, dear, it's as if the
sun was shown ever and again, and then put back behind an eclipse. I
come to you half-blinded, I go away unsatisfied. All the world is dark
in between, and little phantom _yous_ float over it."

She rested her cheek on her hand and looked at me gravely.

"You are hard to satisfy, brother heart," she said.

"I live in snatches of brightness and all the rest of life is waiting
and thinking and waiting."

"What else is there? Haven't we the brightness?"

"I want you," I said. "I want _you_ altogether."

"After so much?"

"I want the more. Mary, I want you to come away with me. No, listen!
this life--don't think I'm not full of the beauty, the happiness, the
wonder---- But it's a suspense. It doesn't go on. It's just a dawn,
dear, a splendid dawn, a glory of color and brightness and freshness and
hope, and--no sun rises. I want the day. Everything else has stopped
with me and stopped with you. I do nothing with my politics now,--I
pretend. I have no plans in life except plans for meeting you and again
meeting you. I want to go on, I want to go on with you and take up work
and the world again--you beside me. I want you to come out of all this
life--out of all this immense wealthy emptiness of yours----"

"Stop," she said, "and listen to me, Stephen."

She paused with her lips pre