“I wish I had known that you would be here alone,” she said seriously, “and that we were going to have such an idle, pleasant time as this.  Pleasure not known beforehand is half wasted; to anticipate it is to double it.  I have not thought once today of having you all to myself this afternoon, and the actual moment of a thing is so soon gone.”

“It is indeed.”

“Poor Clym!” she continued, looking tenderly into his face.  “You are sad.  Something has happened at your home.  Never mind what is—­let us only look at what seems.”

“But, darling, what shall we do?” said he.

“Still go on as we do now—­just live on from meeting to meeting, never minding about another day.  You, I know, are always thinking of that—­I can see you are.  But you must not—­will you, dear Clym?”

“You are just like all women.  They are ever content to build their lives on any incidental position that offers itself; whilst men would fain make a globe to suit them.  Listen to this, Eustacia.  There is a subject I have determined to put off no longer.  Your sentiment on the wisdom of Carpe diem does not impress me today.  Our present mode of life must shortly be brought to an end.”

“It is your mother!”

“It is.  I love you none the less in telling you; it is only right you should know.”

“I have feared my bliss,” she said, with the merest motion of her lips.  “It has been too intense and consuming.”

“There is hope yet.  There are forty years of work in me yet, and why should you despair?  I am only at an awkward turning.  I wish people wouldn’t be so ready to think that there is no progress without uniformity.”

“Ah—­your mind runs off to the philosophical side of it.  Well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge in.  I have heard of people, who, upon coming suddenly into happiness, have died from anxiety lest they should not live to enjoy it.  I felt myself in that whimsical state of uneasiness lately; but I shall be spared it now.  Let us walk on.”

Clym took the hand which was already bared for him—­it was a favourite way with them to walk bare hand in bare hand—­and led her through the ferns.  They formed a very comely picture of love at full flush, as they walked along the valley that late afternoon, the sun sloping down on their right, and throwing their thin spectral shadows, tall as poplar trees, far out across the furze and fern.  Eustacia went with her head thrown back fancifully, a certain glad and voluptuous air of triumph pervading her eyes at having won by her own unaided self a man who was her perfect complement in attainment, appearance, and age.  On the young man’s part, the paleness of face which he had brought with him from Paris, and the incipient marks of time and thought, were less perceptible than when he returned, the healthful and energetic sturdiness which was his by nature having partially recovered its original proportions.  They wandered onward till they reached the nether margin of the heath, where it became marshy and merged in moorland.