to
her heart, he knew that she loved him. Some natures are coarsened by
love bestowed on them; others, like Ashurst's, are swayed and drawn,
warmed and softened, almost exalted, by what they feel to be a sort of
miracle.

And up there among the tors he was racked between the passionate desire
to revel in this new sensation of spring fulfilled within him, and
a vague but very real uneasiness. At one moment he gave himself up
completely to his pride at having captured this pretty, trustful,
dewy-eyed thing! At the next he thought with factitious solemnity: 'Yes,
my boy! But look out what you're doing! You know what comes of it!'

Dusk dropped down without his noticing--dusk on the carved,
Assyrian-looking masses of the rocks. And the voice of Nature said:
"This is a new world for you!" As when a man gets up at four o'clock and
goes out into a summer morning, and beasts, birds, trees stare at him
and he feels as if all had been made new.

He stayed up there for hours, till it grew cold, then groped his way
down the stones and heather roots to the road, back into the lane, and
came again past the wild meadow to the orchard. There he struck a match
and looked at his watch. Nearly twelve! It was black and unstirring in
there now, very different from the lingering, bird-befriended brightness
of six hours ago! And suddenly he saw this idyll of his with the eyes of
the outer world--had mental vision of Mrs. Narracombe's snake-like
neck turned, her quick dark glance taking it all in, her shrewd face
hardening; saw the gipsy-like cousins coarsely mocking and distrustful;
Joe stolid and furious; only the lame man, Jim, with the suffering
eyes, seemed tolerable to his mind. And the village pub!--the gossiping
matrons he passed on his walks; and then--his own friends--Robert
Carton's smile when he went off that morning ten days ago; so ironical
and knowing! Disgusting! For a minute he literally hated this earthy,
cynical world to which one belonged, willy-nilly. The gate where he was
leaning grew grey, a sort of shimmer passed be fore him and spread into
the bluish darkness. The moon! He could just see it over the bank be
hind; red, nearly round-a strange moon! And turning away, he went up
the lane which smelled of the night and cowdung and young leaves. In the
straw-yard he could see the dark shapes of cattle, broken by the pale
sickles of their horns, like so many thin moons, fallen ends-up. He
unlatched the farm gate stealthily