age she saw, again and again,
in lesser degrees during their time abroad. She had seen him so
primitive in his joy and excitement over places and people and
moments--colour, food, storms, towns, passers-by, anything--that she had
been astounded by the force of it. Emotions swept over him and were
gone, but, whilst they were there, she knew that she counted to him for
nothing. Strangest of ironies that when he was least a Beaminster, then
was she farthest from him--strangest of ironies that her link with him
should be the Beaminster in him.

She was frightened of his primitive passions. She had in her the
instinct that one day they would touch his relationship to her and that
that contact would rouse in her the full tide of the unhappiness of
which she was now so conscious, and that then ... what might not
happen?...

And yet behind it all she felt a strange, almost pathetic satisfaction
because he, after all, had in him, just as she had, his two natures at
war. There at least they found some common link; her eagerness to find
some link was evidence enough of the affection she had for him.

After their return to England the wilder nature in him had extended and
broadened. Everything to do with Seddon Court drew it out of him; his
passion for the place was wonderful to witness. Every stone of the
little grey building was a jewel in his eyes; the servants, the cattle,
the horses, the dogs, the flowers, the villagers, even the townspeople
of Lewes drew sentiment from him.

"My old place," he would say, cuddling it to himself; he was never
"sloppy" about it, but direct and simple and straightforward. It was
obviously _the_ great emotion above all other emotions.

He was most anxious that Rachel should share this with him, and during
her first weeks there she thought that she would do so. Then the
disquiet in her spread to the place. The house spread itself out before
her now as the lure that had from the beginning tempted her.

"It was for this place and quiet that you were false to yourself----"

Roddy felt that she did not share his enthusiasm, and their difficulty
over this was exactly their difficulty over everything else; simply that
Roddy was the least eloquent person in the world. He could explain
nothing whatever of the vague unhappiness or dissatisfaction at his
heart. Rachel _could_ have explained a great many things, but Roddy, she
felt, would only look at her in his kind puzzled way and wonder why she
cou