In the midst of it all he faltered and broke off to ask: 

“Why do you love me, Francey?”

And then, impulsively, she flung her arm about him and drew him close to her.  His head was on her breast, and for one uncertain moment she was not Francey Wilmot at all, but the warm living spirit of the sunlight, of the quiet trees and the grass in which they lay—­of all the things of which he was afraid.

“Because you’re such an odd, sad, little boy——­”

3

After tea it began to rain, not dismally, but in a gentle way as people cry who have been too happy.

“In this jolly old country fine weather means bad weather,” Connie Edwards commented cynically.  She had reason to be depressed.  The impossible poppies dripped tears of blood over the brim of the cartwheel hat.  But apart from that misfortune she had never got over her original mood of puzzled dissatisfaction, and she and Cosgrave walked droopingly down the narrow lane arm in arm and almost wordless.

So much of winter days was left that it was dark when they reached the foot of the hill—­the eerie luminous darkness of the country when there is a moon riding somewhere behind the clouds.  Robert could see Christine and Francey just ahead of him.  Christine had taken Francey’s arm, and they talked together in undertones like people who have secret things to say to one another.  How small Christine was!  She seemed to have shrunk into a handful of a woman as though the sun had withered her.  She walked timidly, with bowed head, feeling her way.  Her voice lifted for a moment into the old clearness.

“His father was a wonderful man—­a wonderful, good man.  Unhappy.  Very unfortunate.  Not meant for this world.  His mother was my dear friend.  If they had lived—­those two——­ I did what I could—­I think they will be satisfied—­it makes me happy——­”

She murmured wearily.  And Francey bent her head to listen.  Robert loved her for the tenderness of that gesture.  Yet it was bitter, too, that they should talk of his father.  He wanted to go up to them and tell the truth brutally to Christine’s face.  He would have liked to have told them the one dream which he carried over from his sleep.  But it would have been useless.  Christine would only smile with a cruel, loving wisdom.

“You don’t understand.  You were only a child.  Your father was so unhappy——­”

The myth had become an invulnerable reality and had grown golden in the twilight of her coming blindness.  James Stonehouse had been a good man, a faithful friend, and broken-hearted husband.  If those two had lived everything would have been different.  She threw her hallowed picture of them on the screen of the dripping dusk so that they seemed to live.  Robert saw them too.  That was his mother walking at Christine’s side, and then his father——­ In a sort of shattering vision Robert saw him, a man of promise, black-browed with the riddle of his failure, a man of many hungers, seduced by rootless passions, lured to miserable shipwreck because he could not keep to any course, because he could not give up worthlessness for worth.