d country to the other, there was always some territory left
over from last time, endlessly alluring to the pilgrim lover. Whenever
Arthur found in Aggie's mind a little bare spot that needed cultivating,
he planted there a picture or a poem, that instantly took root, and began
to bloom as it had never (to his eyes) bloomed in any other soil. Aggie,
for her part, yielded all the treasure of her little kingdom as tribute to
the empire that had won her.

Many things were uncertain, the rise of Arthur's salary among them; but of
one thing they were sure, that they would lead the intellectual life
together. Whatever happened, they would keep it up.

They were keeping it up as late as August, when Arthur came down for the
Bank Holiday. He was still enthusiastic, but uncertainty had dimmed his
hope. Marriage had become a magnificent phantasm, superimposed upon a
dream, a purely supposititious rise of salary. The prospect had removed
itself so far in time that it had parted with its substance, like an
object retired modestly into space.

They were walking together in the Queningford fields, when Arthur stopped
suddenly and turned to her.

"Aggie," he said, "supposing, after all, we can never marry?"

"Well," said Aggie, calmly, "if we don't we shall still lead our real life
together.

"But how, if we're separated?"

"It would go on just the same. But we sha'n't be separated. I shall get
something to do in town and live there. I'll be a clerk, or go into a
shop--or something."

"My darling, that would never do."

"Wouldn't it, though!"

"I couldn't let you do it."

"Why ever not? We should see each other every evening, and every Saturday
and Sunday. We should always be learning something new, and learning it
together. We should have a heavenly time."

But Arthur shook his head sadly. "It wouldn't work, my sweetheart. We
aren't made like that."

"I am," said Aggie, stoutly, and there was silence.

"Anyhow," she said, presently, "whatever happens, we're not going to let
it drop."

"Rather not," said he, with incorruptible enthusiasm.

Then, just because he had left off thinking about it, he was told that in
the autumn of that year he might expect a rise.

And in the autumn they were married.

Aggie left the sweet gardens, the white roads and green fields of
Queningford, to live in a side street in Camden Town, in a creaking little
villa built of sulphurous yellow brick furred with soot.

They had come bac