on't understand what the
idea of family means to people like my father and mother. They've been
brought up in it. It has more influence with them than religion. They'd
prefer any scandal to a mesalliance."

"In your sister's case?" I put in, a trifle shocked by the idea of the
scandal, and then discovered that he had not been thinking of Brenda.

"Perhaps not in that case," he said, "but..." he paused noticeably before
adding, "The principle remains the same."

"Isn't it chiefly a matter of courage?" I asked. "It isn't as if ... the
mesalliance were in any way disgraceful."

I can't absolve myself from the charge of hypocrisy in the making of that
speech. I was thinking of Jervaise and Anne, and I did not for one moment
believe that Anne would ever marry him. My purpose was, I think,
well-intentioned. I honestly believed that it would be good for him to
fall in love with Anne and challenge the world of his people's opinion for
her sake. But I blame myself, now, for a quite detestable lack of
sincerity in pushing him on. I should not have done it if I had thought he
had a real chance with her. Life is very difficult; especially for the
well-intentioned.

Jervaise shrugged his shoulders. "It's all so infernally complicated by
this affair of Brenda's," he said.

Yet it has seemed simple enough to him, I reflected, an hour before. "Kick
_him_ and bring _her_ home," had been his ready solution of the
difficulties he thought were before us. Evidently Anne's behaviour during
our talk at the farm had had a considerable effect upon his opinions.
That, and the moon. I feel strongly inclined to include the moon--lazily
declining now towards the ambush of a tumulus-shaped hill, crowned, as is
the manner of that country, with a pert little top-knot of trees.

"Complicated or simplified?" I suggested.

"Complicated; damnably complicated," he replied irritably. "Brenda's a
little fool. It isn't as if she were in earnest."

"Then you don't honestly believe that she's in love with Banks?" I asked,
remembering his "I don't know. How can any one know," of a few minutes
earlier.

"She's so utterly unreliable--in every way," he equivocated. "She always
has been. She isn't the least like the rest of us."

"Don't you count yourself as another exception?" I asked.

"Not in that way, Brenda's way," he said. "She's scatter-brained; you
can't get round that. Going off after the dance in that idiotic way. It's
maddening."

"Well, t