e wasn't going to stay in Garthdale all his life.
Not he. Presently he would want to get to the center of things. (He
forgot to mention that this was the first time he had thought of it.)
Nothing would satisfy him but a big London practice and a name. He
might--ultimately--specialise. If he did he rather thought it would be
gynaecology. He was interested in women's cases. Or it might be nervous
diseases. He wasn't sure. Anyhow, it must be something big.

For under Gwenda Cartaret's eyes his romantic youth became fiery and
turbulent inside him. It not only urged him to tremendous heights,
it made him actually feel that he would reach them. For a solid
three-quarters of an hour, walking over the moor by Karva, he had
ceased to be one of the obscurest of obscure little country doctors.
He was Sir Steven Rowcliffe, the great gynaecologist, or the great
neurologist (as the case might be) with a row of letters after his
name and a whole column under it in the Medical Directory.

And Gwenda Cartaret's eyes never for a moment contradicted him. They
agreed with every one of his preposterous statements.

She didn't know that it was only his romantic youth and that he
never had been and never would be more youthful than he was for that
three-quarters of an hour. On the contrary, to _her_ youth he seemed
to have left youth behind him, and to have grown suddenly serious and
clear-sighted and mature.

And then he stopped, right on the moor, as if he were suddenly aware
of his absurdity.

"I say," he said, "what must you think of me? Gassing about myself
like that."

"I think," she said, "it's awfully nice of you."

"I don't suppose I shall do anything really big. Do you?"

She was silent.

"Honestly now, do you think I shall?"

"I think the things you've done already, the things that'll never be
heard of, are really big."

His silence said, "They are not enough for me," and hers, "For me they
are enough."

"But the other things," he insisted--"the things I want to do----Do
you think I'll do them?"

"I think"--she said slowly--"in fact I'm certain that you'll do them,
if you really mean to."

"That's what you think of me?"

"That's what I think of you."

"Then it's all right," he said. "For what I think of _you_ is that
you'd never say a thing you didn't really mean."

They parted at the turn of the road, where, as he again reminded her,
he had seen her first.

Going home by himself over the moor, Rowcliffe