He allowed several moments to pass before replying to her.  Then he said, courteously but coldly: 

‘I am very sorry that you have asked the one thing I cannot do.’

Adela’s heart sank.  In putting a distance between him and herself she had obeyed an instinct of self-preservation; now that it was effected, the change in his voice was almost more than she could bear.

‘Why do you refuse?’ she asked, trying, though in vain, to look up at him.

’Because it is impossible for me to pretend sympathy with Mr. Mutimer’s views.  In the moment that I heard of the will my action with regard to New Wanley was determined.  What I purpose doing is so inevitably the result of my strongest convictions that nothing could change me.

‘Will you tell me what you are going to do?’ Adela asked, in a tone more like his own.

‘It will pain You.’

‘Yet I should like to know.’

’I shall sweep away every trace of the mines and the works and the houses, and do my utmost to restore the valley to its former state.’

He paused, but Adela said nothing.  Her fingers played with the leaves which grew beside her.

’Your associations with Wanley of course cannot be as strong as my own.  I was born here, and every dearest memory of my life connects itself with the, valley as it used to be.  It was one of the loveliest spots to be found in England.  You can have no idea of the feelings with which I saw this change fall upon it, this desolation and defilement—­I must use the words which come to me.  I might have overcome that grief if I had sympathised with the ends.  But, as it is, I should act in the same way even if I had no such memories.  I know all that you will urge.  It may be inevitable that the green and beautiful spots of the world shall give place to furnaces and mechanics’ dwellings.  For my own part, in this little corner, at all events, the rum shall be delayed.  In this matter I will give my instincts free play.  Of New Wanley not one brick shall remain on another.  I will close the mines, and grass shall again grow over them; I will replant the orchards and mark out the fields as they were before.’

He paused again.

‘You see why I cannot do what you ask.’

It was said in a gentler voice, for insensibly his tone had become almost vehement.

He found a strange pleasure in emphasising his opposition to her.  Perhaps he secretly knew that Adela hung upon his words, and in spite of herself was drawn into the current of his enthusiasm.  But he did not look into her face.  Had he done so he would have seen it fixed and pale.

’Then you think grass and trees of more importance than human lives?’

She spoke in a voice which sounded coldly ironical in its attempt to be merely calm.

’I had rather say that I see no value in human lives in a world from which grass and trees have vanished.  But, in truth, I care little to make my position logically sound.  The ruling motive in my life is the love of beautiful things; I fight against ugliness because it’s the only work in which I can engage with all my heart.  I have nothing of the enthusiasm of humanity.  In the course of centuries the world may perhaps put itself right again; I am only concerned with the present, and I see that everywhere the tendency is towards the rule of mean interests, ignoble ideals.’