the day, Myles endeavoured to repair a clumsiness he had been conscious of at the time, and, after collecting his thoughts—honestly somewhat unsettled by the sight of Honor, who had leapt from lanky girl to beautiful woman since last he saw her—his first words were a hearty congratulation upon the engagement.
"Endicott's stock is very nearly as old, but there's a social difference," he said bluntly. "'Tis a very good match for you, I hope. You'll live at Godleigh, of course?"
"It's all a long, long way off, cousin; and I'm sure I cannot guess how you come to know anything at all about it," said Honor.
Then the traveller told her, beginning his narrative at the point where he had asked Christopher the road to Bear Down. He concluded with a friendly word.
"Handsome he is, for certain, with the wind and the sun on his cheek; and a man of his own ideas, I judge; an original man. I wish you joy, Honor, if I may call you Honor."
"What nonsense! Of course. And I'm glad you like my Christo, because then you'll like me too, I hope. We have very much in common really. We see things alike, live alike, laugh alike. He has a wonderful sense of humour; it teaches him to look at the world from the outside."
"A mighty unwholesome, unnatural attitude for any man," said Mark Endicott.
"Yet hardly from the outside either, if he's so human as to want a wife?" asked Honor's cousin.
"He wants a wife," she answered calmly, "to take the seat next him at the theatre, to walk beside him through the picture-gallery, to compare notes with, to laugh with at the fun of the fair, as he calls it."
Mr. Endicott's needles tapped impatiently.
"Vain talk, vain talk," he said.
"It may be vain, uncle, but it's none the less true," she answered. "If I do not know Christopher, who does? The companionship of a congenial spirit is the idea in his mind—perhaps in mine too. He's a laughing philosopher, and so platonic, so abstracted, that if he had found a man friend, instead of a woman, he would have been just as content to swear eternal friendship and invite the man to sit and watch the great play with him and laugh away their lives together."
"I hope you don't know Mr. Yeoland as well as you imagine, Honor," said Mark Endicott.
"You misjudge him really, I expect," ventured Myles, his thoughts upon a recent incident. "Think what it would be to one of active and jovial mind to sit and look on at life and take no part."
"'Look on!'" burst out the blind man. "Only God Almighty looks on; and not even He, come to think of it, for He's pulling the strings."
"Not so," said Myles; "not so, Uncle Endicott. He put us on the stage, I grant you; and will take us off again when our part is done. But we're moved from inside, not driven from out. We play our lives ourselves, and the wrong step at the entrance—the faulty speech—the good deed—the bad—they all come from inside—all build up the part. Free-will is the only sort of freedom a created thing with conscious intelligence can have. There's no choice about the theatre or the play; but neither man nor God dictates to me how I enact my character."
Mark Endicott reflected. He was a stout Christian, and, like an old war-horse, he smelt battle in this utterance, and rejoiced. It was left for Honor to fill the silence.
"It's all a puppet-show, say what you will, cousin," she summed up; "and anybody can see the strings that move nine dolls out of ten. A puppet-show, and a few of us pay too little for our seats at it; but most of us pay too much. And you need not argue with me, because I know I'm right, and here is Mrs. Loveys to say that supper's ready."
A week later it was practically determined that Myles should concern himself with Bear Down; but the man still remained as unknown to Honor as in the moment of their first meeting. His money interested her not at all; his character presented a problem which attracted her considerably during those scanty hours she found heart to spend away from her lover. It happened that Christopher having departed on a sudden inspiration to Newton Races, Honor Endicott and her cousin set out together for an excursion of pleasure upon the high Moor.
The day was one in August, and hot sunshine brooded with glowing and misty light on hills and valleys, on rivers and woods, on farm lands and wide-spread shorn grasses, where the last silver-green ribbons of dried hay, stretching forth in parallel and winding waves, like tide-marks upon great sands, awaited the wain. Stapledon walked beside Honor's pony, and together they passed upwards to the heather, beside an old wall whose motley fabric glimmered sun-kissed through a blue shimmer of flowers, and faded into a perspective all silvery with lichens, broken with brown, thirsty mosses, many grasses, and the little pale pagodas of navelwort. Beech trees crowned the granite, and the whisper of their leaves was echoed by a brook that murmured unseen in a hollow upon the other side of the road. Here Dartmoor stretched forth a finger, scattered stone, and sowed bracken and furze, heather and rush and the little flowers that love stream-sides.
The travellers climbed awhile, then Myles stopped at a gate in the old wall and Honor drew up her pony. For a moment there was no sound but the gentle crick-crick-crick from bursting seed-pods of the greater gorse, where they scattered their treasure at the touch of the sun. Then the rider spoke.
"How fond you are of leaning upon gates, Myles!"
He smiled.
"I know I am. I've learned more from looking over gates than from most books. You take Nature by surprise that way and win many a pretty secret from her."
The girl stared as at a revelation. Thus far she had scarcely penetrated under her cousin's exterior. He was very fond of dumb animals and very solicitous for them; but more of him she had not gleaned until the present.
"Do you really care for wild things—birds, beasts, weeds? I never guessed that. How interesting! So does Christo. And he loves the dawn as much as you do."
"We have often met at cock-light. It is a bond we have—the love of the morning hour. But don't you like Nature too?"
"Not madly, I'm afraid. I admire her general effects. But I'm a little frightened of her at heart and I cringe to her in her gracious moods. Christo's always poking about into her affairs and wanting to know the meaning of curious things; but he's much too lazy to learn."
"There's nothing so good as to follow Nature and find out a little about her methods in hedges and ditches, where she'll let you."
"You surprise me. I should have thought men and women were much more interesting than rabbits and wild flowers."
"You cannot get so near to them," he answered; "at least, I cannot. I haven't that touch that opens hearts. I wish I had. People draw the blinds down, I always think, before me. Either so, or I'm more than common dense. Yet everybody has the greater part of himself or herself hidden, I suppose; everybody has one little chamber he wouldn't open to God if he could help it."
"Are you a Christian, Myles? But don't answer if you would rather not."
"Why, it makes a man's heart warm by night or by day to think of the Founder of that faith."
Again Honor was surprised.
"I like to hear you say so," she answered. "D'you know I believe that we think nearly alike—with a difference. Christ is much dearer to me than the great awful God of the Universe. He was so good to women and little children; but the Almighty I can only see in Nature—relentless, unforgiving, always ready to punish a slip, always demon-quick
