In spite of himself his face relaxed into a grin. There was no resisting Jane's appeals, and if she wanted now to be quiet, or talk about anything under the sun, at this admirable day's request, he was, for the time being, willing. He told her this, and it is one of the anomalies of human infelicity that she felt a tinge of disappointment at his ready acquiescence.
"I've always loved this lane," she murmured, after not too long a pause. "Isn't it the soul of peace?"
"Peace? How can you?" he looked down at her. "See the struggle! Honeysuckle, trumpet-vine, poison-ivy, wild-grape, alder—and everything else which I can't name—crowding and tangling and choking out each other's lives! You call it peace?"
They had reached a crest of a hill and, down in front of them half a mile on, stood the chapel, so snugly placed that only its little cross could be seen above the tree-tops, summoning the indolent country-side to prayer. With her eyes resting on it, she answered:
"The approach to your devotions seems to have made you pessimistic."
"My devotions are here, at my side," he said in a low voice. "And my pessimism is caused by the true glass of my nature being held honestly before my eyes. It started cutting up this way today after you left us, and ever since I've not been able to spare myself. I don't know how to make you understand it—perhaps you don't want to understand it—but the two sides of this lane seem so peculiarly expressive of my life that I see no peace in them at all."
"The lane might not be so attractive without a medley of rioting things," she answered dreamily. "Yet, it could be improved by cutting out the poison-ivy!"
"If that were cut out of the lane I mean, there would be little left. It seems to have taken possession of—of my lane!"
"Are there not gardeners," she smiled a wee bit tenderly up at him, "who know how it could be done?"
"But I have no gardener." The wistfulness in his voice checked her smile.