Ruby came in for luncheon and made amusing talk. She had been into the
village and was full of the farmers.

"I should think they would go crazy," she ended, scornfully. "What
have they got to live for? I don't wonder that the girls go into the
mills and do anything rather than sit about this little hole."

Later they set out for the fields as the afternoon sun was quietly
going down behind the fringe of pines that skirted the horizon. The
atmosphere of the day had changed and become like the still calm of
perfected life. The little aspirations of the morning, the
fascinations of nature, had given place to a content full of warmth.
Miss Ellwell took a winding wood-road that led first across the
meadow, then over the pine-needles to a little pond. As they sauntered
along Thornton watched his companion draw in the saturated air of the
summer afternoon, as if consciously living thereon. She seemed to him
detached, like a plant that drew its best power away from man, in
fields and woods, a kind of parasite.

"You love this?" he said, idly.

"Love it! I live on it. I come out here and sit down under the trees
and close my eyes. Then the odor from the earth seems to enter me and
make me over. Do you suppose grandfather Roper ever had such desires,
such coarse joys in nature?"

"No, his ancestors had lived that for him. He had it stored up in him,
and he gave it out in moral passion."

"And--they have gone on giving it out in passion----"

She raised her heavy lids questioningly, dreamily.

"So I must be planted again, for I am exhausted. Ah, well, she is a
kindly mother, is old nature, and I like to lie down in her arms."

A little brook flowed sluggishly about big tufts of meadow-grass. The
late violets and swamp pinks sent up heavy odors, mixed with a strong
earthy smell. They seemed to be in the midst of nature's housekeeping
and walked lightly as unannounced guests. They wandered on to an open
patch in the woods and sat down, sinking into the dry, heated
wood-moss. Thornton had no desire to talk; she, who had listened to
him the other time, now took him in charge.

"You are so far away, here, in the heat and the earth; so far away
from the world. One gets tired always trying to catch up, and always
being tired."

As she talked he felt his limbs heavy in obedience to her words. His
mind became tranquil as under the influence of a narcotic; it seemed
such a little thing what he did over there in Camberton, an