"I couldn't let you."

"I can do anything I choose. Your little hands can't stop me."

She looked at him gravely. "Why do you choose it?"

"Because I can choose nothing else."

"Ah, why are you so good to me?"

"Be_cause_"--he mocked her absurd intonation.

"Don't tell me. It's because you _are_ good. You can't help it."

"No; I can't help it."

"But--" she objected, "I'm so horrid. I don't believe in God and I say
damn when I'm angry."

"I heard you."

"You said yourself I wanted violets to sweeten me and hammers to soften
me--you think I'm so bitter and so hard."

"You know what I think of you. And you know," he said, "that I love
you."

"You mustn't," she whispered. "It's no good."

He seemed not to have heard her. "And some day," he said, "I shall marry
you. I'd marry you to-morrow if I'd enough money to buy a hat with."

"It's no use loving me. You can't marry me."

"I know I can't. But it makes no difference."

"No difference?"

"Not to me."

"If you could," she said, "I wouldn't let you. It would only be one
misery more."

"How do you know what it would be?"

"I won't even let you love me. That's misery too."

"You don't know what it is."

"I do know, and I don't want any more of it. I've been hurt with it."

With a low cry of pity and pain he took her in his arms and held her to
him.

She writhed and struggled in his clasp. "Don't," she cried, "don't touch
me. Let me alone. I can't bear it."

He turned her face to his to find the truth in her eyes. "And yet," he
said, "you love me."

"No, no. It's no use," she reiterated; "it's no use. I won't have it. I
won't let you love me."

"You can't stop me."

"I can stop you torturing me!"

She was freed from his arms now. She sat up. Her small face was sullen
and defiant in its expression of indomitable will.

"Of course," he said, "you can stop me touching you. But it makes no
difference. I shall go on caring for you. It's no use struggling and
crying against that."

"I shall go on struggling."

"Go on as long as you like. It doesn't matter. I can wait."

She rose. "Come," she said. "It's time to be going back."

He obeyed her. When they reached the rise on the station road they
turned and waited for the others to come up with them. They looked back.
Their hill was on their left, to their right was the great plain, grey
with mist. They stood silent, oppressed by their sense of a sad and
sudden beauty. Then with the others