’Then, dear Christine, let us mend the muddle.  I’ll go away for a few days and get another licence, and you can come to me.’

She shrank from this perceptibly.  ’I cannot screw myself up to it a second time,’ she said.  ’I am sure I cannot!  Besides, I promised Mr. Bealand.  And yet how can I continue to see you after such a rumour?  We shall be watched now, for certain.’

‘Then don’t see me.’

‘I fear I must not for the present.  Altogether—­’

‘What?’

‘I am very depressed.’

These views were not very inspiriting to Nicholas, as he construed them.  It may indeed have been possible that he construed them wrongly, and should have insisted upon her making the rumour true.  Unfortunately, too, he had come to her in a hurry through brambles and briars, water and weed, and the shaggy wildness which hung about his appearance at this fine and correct time of day lent an impracticability to the look of him.

’You blame me—­you repent your courses—­you repent that you ever, ever owned anything to me!’

‘No, Nicholas, I do not repent that,’ she returned gently, though with firmness.  ’But I think that you ought not to have got that licence without asking me first; and I also think that you ought to have known how it would be if you lived on here in your present position, and made no effort to better it.  I can bear whatever comes, for social ruin is not personal ruin or even personal disgrace.  But as a sensible, new-risen poet says, whom I have been reading this morning:-

   The world and its ways have a certain worth: 
   And to press a point while these oppose
   Were simple policy.  Better wait.

As soon as you had got my promise, Nic, you should have gone away—­yes—­and made a name, and come back to claim me.  That was my silly girlish dream about my hero.’

’Perhaps I can do as much yet!  And would you have indeed liked better to live away from me for family reasons, than to run a risk in seeing me for affection’s sake?  O what a cold heart it has grown!  If I had been a prince, and you a dairymaid, I’d have stood by you in the face of the world!’

She shook her head.  ’Ah—­you don’t know what society is—­you don’t know.’

’Perhaps not.  Who was that strange gentleman of about seven-and-twenty I saw at Mr. Bellston’s christening feast?’

’Oh—­that was his nephew James.  Now he is a man who has seen an unusual extent of the world for his age.  He is a great traveller, you know.’

‘Indeed.’

‘In fact an explorer.  He is very entertaining.’

‘No doubt.’

Nicholas received no shock of jealousy from her announcement.  He knew her so well that he could see she was not in the least in love with Bellston.  But he asked if Bellston were going to continue his explorations.

‘Not if he settles in life.  Otherwise he will, I suppose.’