e needlework and knitting that she
did for a neighbouring war workroom, the gathering and drying of the
sphagnum moss, the visiting of a few convalescent soldiers, a daily
portion of Wordsworth, and some books about him--these things were
within her compass George knew all about them, for she chronicled them
in her letters day by day. She had a happy peaceful sense of communion
with him while she was busy with them. But Farrell's restless mind and
wide culture at once tired and fascinated her. He would often bring a
volume of Shelley, or Pater, or Hardy, or some quite modern poet, in his
pocket, and propose to read to her and Bridget, when the sketching was
done. And as he read, he would digress into talk, the careless audacity
of which would sometimes distress or repel, and sometimes absorb her;
till suddenly, perhaps, she realised how far she was wandering from that
common ground where she and George had moved together, and would try and
find her way back to it. She was always learning some new thing; and she
hated to learn, unless George changed and learnt with her.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Captain Marsworth was walking along the road from Grasmere to
Rydal with a rather listless step. As a soldier he was by no means
satisfied with the news of the week. We ought to have been in Lille and
weren't. It seemed to him that was about what the Loos action came to;
and his spirits were low. In addition he was in one of those fits of
depression which attack an able man who has temporarily come to a
stand-still in life, when his physical state is not buoyant enough to
enable him to fight them off. He was beginning plainly to see that his
own part in the war was done. His shattered arm, together with the
neuralgic condition which had followed on the wound, were not going to
mend sufficiently within any reasonable time to let him return to the
fighting line, where, at the moment of his wound, he was doing
divisional staff work, and was in the way of early promotion. He was a
man of clear and vigorous mind, inclined always to take a pessimistic
view of himself and his surroundings, and very critical also of persons
in authority; a scientific soldier, besides, indulging a strong natural
contempt for the politicians and all their crew, only surpassed by a
similar scorn of newspapers and the press. He had never been popular as
a subaltern, but since he had conquered his place among the 'brains' of
the ar