but she was also old; she had little self-confidence, and yet she was a good judge of people.  She was happy; but what made her happy?  If they were alone and the excitement had worn off, and they had to deal with the ordinary facts of the day, what would happen?  Casting his eye upon his own character, two things appeared to him:  that he was very unpunctual, and that he disliked answering notes.  As far as he knew Rachel was inclined to be punctual, but he could not remember that he had ever seen her with a pen in her hand.  Let him next imagine a dinner-party, say at the Crooms, and Wilson, who had taken her down, talking about the state of the Liberal party.  She would say—­of course she was absolutely ignorant of politics.  Nevertheless she was intelligent certainly, and honest too.  Her temper was uncertain—­that he had noticed—­and she was not domestic, and she was not easy, and she was not quiet, or beautiful, except in some dresses in some lights.  But the great gift she had was that she understood what was said to her; there had never been any one like her for talking to.  You could say anything—­you could say everything, and yet she was never servile.  Here he pulled himself up, for it seemed to him suddenly that he knew less about her than about any one.  All these thoughts had occurred to him many times already; often had he tried to argue and reason; and again he had reached the old state of doubt.  He did not know her, and he did not know what she felt, or whether they could live together, or whether he wanted to marry her, and yet he was in love with her.

Supposing he went to her and said (he slackened his pace and began to speak aloud, as if he were speaking to Rachel): 

“I worship you, but I loathe marriage, I hate its smugness, its safety, its compromise, and the thought of you interfering in my work, hindering me; what would you answer?”

He stopped, leant against the trunk of a tree, and gazed without seeing them at some stones scattered on the bank of the dry river-bed.  He saw Rachel’s face distinctly, the grey eyes, the hair, the mouth; the face that could look so many things—­plain, vacant, almost insignificant, or wild, passionate, almost beautiful, yet in his eyes was always the same because of the extraordinary freedom with which she looked at him, and spoke as she felt.  What would she answer?  What did she feel?  Did she love him, or did she feel nothing at all for him or for any other man, being, as she had said that afternoon, free, like the wind or the sea?

“Oh, you’re free!” he exclaimed, in exultation at the thought of her, “and I’d keep you free.  We’d be free together.  We’d share everything together.  No happiness would be like ours.  No lives would compare with ours.”  He opened his arms wide as if to hold her and the world in one embrace.

No longer able to consider marriage, or to weigh coolly what her nature was, or how it would be if they lived together, he dropped to the ground and sat absorbed in the thought of her, and soon tormented by the desire to be in her presence again.