here are two questions that must be resolved before we can get any
further," I commented. "The first is whether your sister has gone
back--she may have been safe in bed for the last hour and a half for all
we know. And the second is whether she is honestly in love with Banks.
From what I've heard of him, I should think it's very likely," I added
thoughtfully.

Jervaise had his hands in his pockets and was staring up at the moon.
"He's not a bad chap in some ways," he remarked, "but there's no getting
over the fact that he's our chauffeur."

I saw that. No badge could be quite so disgraceful in the eyes of the
Jervaises as the badge of servitude. Our talk there, by the wood, had
begun to create around us all the limitations of man's world. I was
forgetting that we were moving in the free spaces of a planetary republic.
And then I looked up and saw the leaning moon, whimsically balanced on the
very crown of the topknot that gave a touch of impudence to the
pudding-basin hill.

"What's the name of that hill?" I asked.

He looked at it absently for a moment before he said, "The people about
here call it 'Jervaise Clump.' It's a landmark for miles."

There was no getting away from it. The Jervaises had conquered all this
land and labelled it. I watched the sharp edge of the tree-clump slowly
indenting the rounded back of the moon; and it seemed to me that
Jervaise-Clump was the solid permanent thing; the moon a mere incident of
the night.

"Oh! Lord! Lord! What bosh it all is!" I exclaimed.

"All what?" Jervaise asked sharply.

"This business of distinctions; of masters and servants; of families in
possession and families in dependence," I enunciated.

"It isn't such dangerous bosh as socialism," Jervaise replied.

"I wasn't thinking of socialism," I said; "I was thinking of
interplanetary space."

Jervaise blew contemptuously. "Don't talk rot," he said, and I realised
that we were back again on the old footing of our normal relations.
Nevertheless I made one more effort.

"It isn't rot," I said. "If it is, then every impulse towards beauty and
freedom is rot, too." (I could not have said that to Jervaise in a house,
but I drew confidence from the last tip of the moon beckoning farewell
above the curve of the hill.) "Your, whatever it is you feel for Miss
Banks--things like that ... all our little efforts to get away from these
awful, clogging human rules."

I had given him his opportunity and he took it. He