“ I can promise nothing—nothing of the beautiful side of life. No rainbows ever play in my cloudy atmosphere, as they do in his changeful, April weather. I am plain, dull, uninteresting, old-fashioned. I know nothing, and go joylessly in consequence—a cheerless soul with little laughter in me. Sometimes I think the east wind must blow colder for touching me. That's all I have to offer, and you know it by this time. What the other can give you that is better, softer, sweeter for a beautiful woman, I needn't tell you. ”

“ Never, since conscious intelligence awakened here, has that invention of the dunces justified itself—never once has any god from any chariot of fire descended to cut one sole knot in a tangle of earthly affairs. The seeds of human actions are sown to certain fruition but uncertain crop, and Fate and Chance, juggling with their growth, afford images of the highest tragedy this world has wept at; conjure from the irony of natural operations all that pertains to sweet and bitter laughter; embrace and environ the whole apparition of humanity's progress through time. ”

“ On such a morning as hunting folk live for, some ten days after the conversation between Stapledon and Mr. Endicott, Christopher, who did not himself hunt, drove Honor to a meet of the Mid Devon. Taking his dog-cart down a mossy by-path at the spinney-side, he stopped not fifty yards distant from where a patch of scarlet marked the huntsman's standpoint. Above was a race of broken clouds and gleam of sunshine from pale blue sky; below spread opaline air and naked boughs, save where great tods of ivy shone; while underneath nervous tails twitched among brown fern and wintry furzes. ”

“ No definition or happy phrase sums it correctly, or rates it high enough; it is a balm of life; it makes for greater things than clean laughter from the lungs; it is the root of tolerance, the prop of patience; it "suffers long and is kind"; serves to tune each little life-harmony with the world-harmony about it; keeps the heart of man sweet, his soul modest. And at the end, when the light thickens and the mesh grows tight, humour can share the suffering vigils of the sleepless, can soften pain, can brighten the ashy road to death. ”

“ Had she possessed power to turn deaf ears and reject this theory as vain and out of all harmony with her own knowledge of Myles Stapledon, Honor's state had been more gracious; but it was beyond her mental strength to do so. Understanding the dead man no less and no more than her uncle, she read new subtleties into the past before this bitterness, credited Myles with views that never existed in his mind at all, and concluded with herself that he had indeed taken his own life that she might be what she now was—the wife of Christopher Yeoland. ”

“ What is the happiness worth that won't stand analysis? All the same, I understand you very well. I believe there is nothing like prosperity and such a love of life as I feel now to make a man a coward. Anybody can be brave when he's got everything to win and nothing to lose; but it takes a big man to look ahead without a quickened pulse when he's at the top of his desire, when he knows in the heart of him that he's living through the happiest, best, most perfect days the earth can offer. ”

“ For once Myles Stapledon laughed.
"I do admire him: a natural man, loving the wine of life. We have more in common than you might think, for all that I'm no sportsman. I respect any man who will rise with the birds for sheer love of a fair dawn."
"Your rule of conduct is so much more strenuous, so much sterner and greyer," she said, "The cold rain and the shriek of east winds in ill-hung doors are nothing to you. They really hurt him."
"Temperament. Yet I think our paths lead the same way."
Honor laughed in her turn. ”

“ A new atmosphere moved over the stagnation of Endicott's and the blind man settled into a great content.
The mistress had other matters to fill her thoughts, and, as the autumn approached, private concerns wholly occupied her. For Honor was more frank with herself than is possible to a soul that lacks humour; and a problem now rose ahead of her beyond the solution of days and nights; a mystery that developed, deepened, heightened, until it became a distraction and a trouble. Yet there was laughter in it, but of a sub-acid sort, neither wholesome nor pleasant. ”

“ I'm not a true Endicott."
"As to that, 'tis only those who won't see are blind. Eyesight's the window of the house, but the ear is the door. A blow-fly on the window-pane is big enough to hide the evening star—if you're content to let it; but shut your eyes and you'll see the star in the blue, with nought between it and your thoughts."
"It's so hard to be wise; and words are not warm, live things you can cuddle. Oh, I want something smaller than myself to love! ”

“ Thus they fashion man's black future out of his sunny past, breed his tears from his laughter, his enduring sorrows from fleeting whims, and tangle him soul-deep in networks of his own idle creation. Our secure hour is the signal to their activities; they sleep while we are watchful; they wake when we enter upon our pleasures and seek for joy.
Moved by a sentiment that herself might be the object of his thoughts, and her heart yearning to him as he sat there alone, Honor gave heed to the slow voice and listened to Mark Endicott's oral musings upon the time that was past. ”

“ I delight to wake early and look at you asleep and know you are mine, and that you love to be mine."
"It's a great deal of happiness for two people, Myles."
"So much that I fear, and, fearing, dim my happiness, and then blame myself for such folly."
"The rainy day will come. You are like poor, dear Cramphorn, who scents mystery in the open faces of flowers, suspects a tragedy at crossing of knives or spilling of salt; sees Fate busy breeding trouble if a foot but slips on a threshold. How he can have one happy moment I don't know. ”

“ There's no created thing can be free. Doing His will—all, all. Root and branch, berry and bud, feathered and furred creatures—all working to live complete. The lily does toil; and if you could see the double fringe of her roots above the bulb and under it—as I can well mind when I had eyes and loved the garden—you'd know it was so. There's no good thing in all the world got without labour at the back of it. Think what goes to build a flash of lightning—you that love storms. But the lightning's not free neither. And the Almighty's self works harder than all His worlds put together. ”

“ Yet Honor Endicott had lived too close to Nature to make the mistake of any lengthened self-deception. Myles was living a life that would wear, as against an existence which even her green experience of the world whispered was irrational; and though the shrewdness of Stapledon appeared a drab and unlovely compound beside Christopher's sparkling philosophy, yet Honor knew which stood for the juster views of life and conduct. One represented a grey twilight, clear and calm if wholly lacking any splendid height of hue; the other promised wide contrasts, tropical sunshine, and probable tempests. ”

“ I don't speak without sympathy for you either; but, in common with the two of you—Myles and yourself—this silly woman is uppermost in my mind—her and her good. So, since you ask, I tell you I'm disappointed with you; you've falsified my predictions of late, and your present relations with Honor have drifted into a flat wrong against her husband, though you may be on a plane as high as heaven, in your own flabby imagination. This friendship is not a thing settled, defined, marked off all round by boundaries. No friendship stands still, any more than anything else in the universe. ”

“ Men are different. They're not built to go on mooning with a talking doll for ever. Even Christopher Yeoland is made of flesh and blood. A woman may be all mind; a man never is. Now, what are you, and what are you doing? You're a married woman, and you're ruining the life of about the worthiest man I've been happy to meet since my own brother—your dear father—died. End it—if Yeoland hasn't got strength and determination sufficient to do so. Tell him your mind; be true to your husband, and bid the man go—if he is a man."
Honor Stapledon listened to this grave rebuke with a heaving breast. ”

“ Duty was the highest form of praise that he knew, and he prepared to fall back upon that. Let others order their brief journeys on lines fantastical or futile, he at least was wiser and knew better. He reflected that the folly of the world can injure no soul's vital spots. Only a man's self can wound himself mortally. He would live on agreeably to Nature—obedient as the granite to the soft, tireless touch of wind and rain; prompt as the bursting bud and uncurling tendril ”

“ Seed was sown in that moment, as she stood with the blue sky mirrored in her brown eyes, and a growth was established, whose roots would keep the woman's heart aching till age blunted sensibility, whose fruits would drop gall upon her thirst while life lasted. Unshared darkness must be her portion—darkness and cruel knowledge to be revealed to none, to be hidden out of all searching, to be concealed even beyond the reach of Christopher's love and deepest sympathy. ”

“ Her reflections indeed she kept to herself for the most part, and certainly the event responsible in great measure for her sustained ill-health she imparted to no one; but her actions were obvious, and Myles began to grow care-worn as he watched a life so full of energy and various interest now sink into mere mechanical existence. Her walks dwindled to strolls; Nature brought Honor no particular delight; and the old haunts failed to cheer her. Until midday she rarely stirred from her own room, and sometimes she would keep her bed altogether from sheer indifference toward affairs. ”

“ Between Bear Down and the valley was fern and the breath of fern and great gleam and drone of summer flies under the living sun. Here Teign tumbled through deep gorges, and from the wind-swept granite of Godleigh hill, beneath unclouded noonday splendour, acres of bracken panted silver-green in the glare, dipped to the fringes of the woods below, and shone like a shield of light upon the bosom of the acclivity. At river-level spread a forest, where oak and alder, larch and pinnacles of pine shimmered in the haze. ”

“ We're all agreed that Yeoland's no hypocrite, whatever else he may be. Three days since I had speech with him, and your name was on his lips, and he rejoiced that you were his friend and Honor's husband. He does not dream that his return to life has either gladdened her or troubled you. He only sees her now pretty much as she was when he went away. He hasn't seen what you and I have—her sorrows. But, remember that Honor's real happiness rests with you—nobody else—and she knows it, and trusts to you for it. ”

“ Personally Stapledon had served to brighten his sightless life not a little, had set new currents running in his mind, had sweetened back waters grown stagnant by disuse; for Myles, as Endicott believed, was fine metal—wise, self-contained even in his love, a sober and discreet man—super-excellent save in the matter of his return to Bear Down. Even there, however, on second thoughts, Mark did not judge him. He only felt the lover to be human, and it was viewed in the character of a husband for Honor that the old man regarded his nephew without enthusiasm. ”

“ Youth saddens nobody; but age must. Our love of life wakes our sorrow for the old who are going out of it. 'Tis the difference between a bud and a withered blossom. Sunrise makes no man sad. That's why you love it, and love to be in it, as I do. The blush of dawn is like the warm cheek of a waking child—lovely; but sunset is a dying thing. ”

“ A little lawn rolled away from the granite walls of the farm front, and the parterres, spread snugly in the angle of the building, were set with rough quartz and gay under old-world flowers. Here throve in many-coloured, many-scented joy martagon lilies—pale, purple, and lemon—dark monkshoods, sweet-williams, sweet-sultans, lavender, great purple poppies, snapdragons, pansies, stocks, and flaming marigolds. Along the streamlet, coaxed hither from Scor Hill to feed the farm, grew ferns and willow-herbs, wild geraniums of varied sorts, wood strawberries, orpine, and other country folks. ”

“ Why wait a week when there is no need to wait a day, or an hour? I love you—better than anybody in the world; and I'll tell Christopher that; also that I have done great wrong in this matter; and I ask you, Myles, to take me where I shall never see him again—for his good and because I love you with my whole heart—all, all of it. ”

“ Yeoland started.
"You mean that I was wrong, then, and Mr. Endicott right? But don't you see how infernally greedy and unreasonable you are? Either that, or you continue to misunderstand me of set purpose. I gave you Honor for your own; yet you grudge me my place at Godleigh—at the footstool of the throne you share with her. What do I rob you of? Do the birds rob you when they eat the crumbs fallen from your table? I cannot remotely judge of your attitude."
"That is true; but every other man can. And it may be that many do." ”

“ Hither came Brimblecombe, and his feet stamped over the graves of many more dead than the mounds of the churchyard indicated. A young man, the sexton's assistant, sat and smoked among the marble skulls, waiting for his master there; and now he rose, put out his pipe, and gave Noah "Good morning." A moment later the blackbird had fled with a string of sharp ejaculations, for a harsh note grated upon the air as the sexton turned his key in the Yeoland vault door. A flood of light from the risen sun streamed in where, "sealed from the moth and the owl and the flitter-mouse," lay the dead. ”

“ Then Honor grew very angry with herself, but tried to believe that her anger was directed against Myles. She flew upon him savagely to tear him to pieces; she strove furiously, pitilessly to strip him to his soul; but she was just between the ebullitions of anger, and, after her hurricane onset, the lacerated figure of her cousin still stood a man. He was difficult to belittle or disparage by the nature of him. One may trample a flower-bed into unlovely ruin in a moment; to rob a lichen-clad rock of its particular beauty is a harder and a lengthier task. ”

“ It is a great comfort to believe; and Christopher does too."
"A beautiful religion," said Myles; "especially for women. They do well to love One who raised them out of the dust and set them up. Besides, there is their general mistiness on the subject of justice. Christianity repels me here, draws me there. It is child's meat, with its sugar-plums and whips for the good and naughty; it is higher than the stars in its humanity." ”

“ Ten minutes later husband and wife met, and Stapledon spoke of his recent experience.
"Scor Hill Circle seems destined to be the theatre of all my strangest accidents."
"And most terrible, perhaps?"
"And most precious. But this last is grim enough. Just now that old hag Cherry Grepe was here begging and threatening in a breath. Think of it: she says she killed Christopher Yeoland!"
Time is like a Moor mist and weaves curtains of a density very uncertain, very apt to part and vanish in those moments when they look most impenetrable. ”

“ A world stretched before them lighted by the cold purity of spotless dawn, and the day-spring, begemmed with primrose stars, was heralded by thrushes in many a dingle, by the lark on high. As yet earth lay in the light that is neither sunshine nor shadow, but out of the waxing blue above, from whence, like a shower, fell his tinkling rhapsody, one singing bird could see the sun, and himself shone like a little star. ”

“ What dogma intrudes amongst them to blind and blight and make our hearts ache? They are alive and eternal—as all that is true must be eternal. They were waiting—hidden in human hearts—left for a man to discover, not for a God to invent. Who cares for the old dead theories that explained rainbows and precious stones, and the colour of a summer-clad heath and the strength of the solid earth? We have the things themselves. ”

“ A few puny fragments of asplenium found life amid the interspaces of the stone-work and lived dismally in the dark where damp oozed and granite sweated. The fourth ledge bore a coffin that held Christopher Yeoland's father, and its pall had as yet resisted the decaying influences of this gloomy spot, for only a few round circles of mould dimmed the lustre of the velvet. ”

“ Many fair things broke bud about her, and in secret places the splendour of summer made ready. Soon the heather would illuminate these wastes and the foxgloves carry like colour aloft on countless steeples of purple bells; soon woodbine and briar would wreathe the granite, and little pearly clusters of blossom spring aloft from the red sundews in the marsh; while the king fern already spread his wide fronds above the home of the trout, and the brake fern slowly wove his particular green into the coombs and hills. ”