'There is no responsibility.'
'Yes, there is; you practically threaten me. It is like writing a letter to say you will commit suicide unless I do something. You threaten, anyhow, to commit celibacy unless I marry you.'
'No, I don't threaten,' said he; 'so far from threatening, I only leave the door open in case of Hope wanting to come in. That is badly expressed; a woman would have said it better.'
Sybil was suddenly touched by his gentleness.
'No one could have said it better,' she said. 'Charlie, believe me, I am sorry, but—here is the truth of it: I don't believe I can love anybody. This also: if I did not like you so much, I think I would marry you.'
'Ah, spare me that,' he said.
'I do spare it you. I will not willingly make you very unhappy. Do you believe that?'
He stopped, and came close to her.
'Sybil, if you pointed to the sky and said it was night, I should believe you,' he said.
She made no reply to that, and they walked on in silence. Everywhere over the broad expanse of swelling downs, looking huge behind the heat-haze, and over the green restfulness of the water-meadows beneath them, even over the blue immensity of the sky, there was spread a sense of quiet and leisure. To Sybil, thinking of the after-lunch conversation, it seemed of value; to her at the moment this contented security was a big factor in life. Economically, no doubt, she was wrong; a score of dynamos utilizing the waste power of the streams below that so hurryingly sought the sea would have contributed much to the utility of the scene, and the noble timber which surrounded them could certainly have been far better employed in some factory than to have merely formed a most wasteful handle, as it were, for the great parasol of leaves which screened them and the idle, cud-chewing cattle. Here, as always, there was that silent deadly war going on between utility and beauty; soon, without a doubt, in a score of years, or a score of days, or a score of centuries, principles of economy would prevail, and the world of men would live in cast-iron mood in extremely sanitary cast-iron dwellings. Already, it seemed to her, the death-knell of beauty was vibrating in the air. The rural heart of the country was bleeding into the towns; instead of beating the swords into sickles, the way of the world now was to beat the elm-trees into faggots and the rivers into electric light. For the faggots would give warmth and the electricity would give light; these things were useful. And in the distance, like a cuttle-fish with tentacles waving and growing every moment nearer, New York, and all that New York stood for, was sucking in whatever came within its reach. She was already sucked in.