And he went into the garden to think if life at Riversdale would suit her as well as this life.  It would be impossible for him to accompany her to chapel, and if he did not do so there would be an estrangement....  Nor could he allow Riversdale to be turned into an orphanage.  Perhaps he would allow her to do anything; that pleased her; all the same, she would feel that the permission did not come out of his instinct, only out of a desire to please her.

“Well, Owen,” she said as soon as he had finished breakfast, “I don’t want to hurry you, but if you are to catch that train we must start at once.”

It was one of her off days, and she was going to spend it at the cottage.  There were a great many things for her to do.  She never had much time, but she would go to the station with him.

“But you have already walked two miles.”

“Ah!  Eliza has told you?”

“Yes, that you go to Mass every morning.”

Owen seemed to regret the fact, and when he broke silence again it was to inquire into the expenses of the orphanage and to deplore the necessity which governed her life of going to London every day, returning home late, and he offered her a subscription which would cover the entire cost.  But his offer of money seemed to embarrass her, and he understood that her pleasure was to go to London to work for these children, for only in that way could the home be entirely her own.  If she were to accept help from the outside it would drift away from her and from its original intention, just as the convent had done.  Nor was it very likely that she would care to give up her work and come to live at Riversdale, as his wife, of course as his wife, and it would pain her to refuse him....  Better leave things as they were.

“You are right,” he said, “not to live in London; one avoids a great deal of loneliness.  One is more lonely in London than anywhere I know.  The country is the natural home of man.  Man is an arborial animal,” he added, laughing, “and is only happy among trees.”

“And woman, what is she?  A material animal?”

“I suppose so.  You have your children; I have my trees.”

The words seemed to have a meaning which eluded them, and they pondered while they descended the hillside until the piece of low-lying land came into view and the bridge crossing the sluggish stream, amid whose rushes he had gathered the wild forget-me-not.  As he was about to speak of them he remembered her singing classes, and that yester evening had worn away without hearing her sing.  “You have lost all interest in music, I fear.  You think of it now as a means of making money... for your children,” he added, so that his words might not wound her.

“And you, Owen, does music still interest you,”—­she nearly said, “now that I am out of it?” but stopped, the words on her lips.

“Yes,” he said, “I think it does,” and there was an eagerness in his voice when he said, “I have been trying my hand at composition again, and I have written a good many songs and some piano pieces, one for piano and violin.”