knew he could not do without her, still more she knew he must not do
without her, and these certainties became the main fabric of her love.
She had to keep him, less for her own sake than for that of her idea,
but gradually the severe rules she had made became relaxed.

They were not to meet except on that one day a week demanded by
Christabel, who also had to keep Francis happy and who would have
welcomed the powers of darkness to relieve the monotony of her own
life; but Rose could hardly take a ride without meeting Francis, also
riding; or he would appear, on foot, out of a wood, out of a side
road, and waylay her. He seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of her
presence, and they would have a few minutes of conversation, or of a
silence which was no longer beautiful, but terrible with effort, with
possibilities and with dread.

She ought, she knew, to have kept to her own side of the bridge, to
have ridden on the high Downs inviting to a rider, but she loved the
farther country where the air was blue and soft, where little orchards
broke oddly into great fields, where brooks ran across the lanes and
pink-washed cottages were fronted by little gardens full of homely
flowers and clothes drying on the bushes. There was a smell of fruit
and wood fires and damp earth; there was a veil of magic over the
whole landscape and, far off, the shining line of the channel seemed
to be washing the feet of the blue hills. The country had the charm of
home with the allurement of the unknown and, within sound of the
steamers hooting in the river, almost within sight of the city lying,
red-roofed and smoky with factories, round the docks and mounting in
terraces to the heights of Upper Radstowe, there was an expectation of
mystery, of secrets kept for countless centuries by the earth which
was rich and fecund and alive. She could not deny herself the sight of