s, by herself, without even Gwinnie; not caring a damn.

If she had been cruel--if she had wanted to hurt Effie. She hadn't meant
to hurt her.

She thought of things. Places she had been happy in. She loved the high
open country. Fancy sitting with Gibson in his stuffy office, day after
day, for five years. Fancy going to Glasgow with him. Glasgow--

No. No.

She thought: "I can pretend it didn't happen. Nothing's happened. I'm
myself. The same me I was before."

Suddenly she stood still. On the top of the ridge the whole sky opened,
throbbing with light, immense as the sky above a plain. Hills--thousands
of hills. Thousands of smooth curves joining and parting, overlapping,
rolling together.

What did you want? What did you want? How could you want anything but
this for ever?

Across the green field she saw the farm. Tall, long-skirted elms standing
up in a row before the sallow ricks and long grey barns. Under the loaded
droop of green a grey sharp-pointed gable, topped by a stone ball. Four
Scotch firs beside it, slender and strange.

She stood leaning over the white gate, looking and thinking.

Funny things, colts grazing. Short bodies that stopped at their
shoulders; long, long necks hanging down like tails, pushing their heads
along the ground. She could hear their nostrils breathing and the
scrinch, scrinch of their teeth tearing the grass.

You could be happy living on a farm, looking after the animals.

You could learn farming. People paid.

Suddenly she knew what she would do. She would do _that_. It wasn't
reasonable to go on sitting in a stuffy office doing work you hated when
you could pack up and go. She couldn't have stuck to it for five years if
it hadn't been for Gibson--falling in love with him, the most
unreasonable thing of all. She didn't care if you had to pay to learn
farming. You had to pay for everything you learned. There were the two
hundred pounds poor dear Daddy left, doing nothing. She could pay.

She would go down to the farm now, this minute, and see if they
would take her.

As she crossed the field she heard the farmyard gate open and shut.

The man came up towards her in the narrow path. He was looking at her as
he came, tilting his head back to get her clear into his eyes under the
shade of his slouched hat.

She called to him. "Is this your farm?" And he halted.

He smiled; the narrow smile of small, fine lips, with a queer, winged
movement of the moustache, a flu