already promise the return of spring. Birds chirped in the leafless
trees, the earth was damp and seemed to stir with the efforts of
innumerable roots to produce a richer life, yet the leaves of autumn
were still lying on the ground. How she loved this country, this blue
air, this smell of fruit present even before the blossom was on the
trees, the sight of wood smoke curling from the cottage chimneys, the
very ruts in the road! A little while ago she had told herself she was
sickened by it: it was the symbol of failure and young, tender, ruined
hopes, but the love of it lay deeply in her heart; all this, the
failure and the ruin, were of her life and it could be no more cast
off than could the hands which had refused the kissing and clasping of
Francis Sales.

This was her own country: the strange, unbridled, stealthy wildness of
it was in her blood; it was in Henrietta through her father, it was in
Francis, too, and due to it was this tragic muddle in which they found
themselves. She had a faint, despairing feeling that she could not
fight against it, that her mission would only be another failure, yet
she counted on Francis's easy tenderness of heart. The very weakness
which persuaded him to an action could turn him from it, and it was to
his tenderness she must appeal.

She reached the track and, raised high on her horse, she could see the
fields with the rough grass and gorse bushes sloping to the channel;
the pale strip of water like silver melted in the heart of the hills
and falling slowly to the sea; the blue hills themselves like gates
keeping a fair country. The place where the wood had been was like a
brown and purple rug, but before long the pattern would be complicated
by creeping green. Where the trees had murmured and whispered or stood
silent, listening, there was now no sound, no secrecy; the place lay