"He was a good man in his way, his uncomfortable way."
"Then I like them wickeder than that."
"It made him uncomfortable too, you know."
"If you're going to preach—"
He laughed. "I didn't mean to. I was only offering you the experience of my maturity!"
"Well, I'm getting stiff and cold. Helen likes that kind of thing. Give it to her while I get warm. Unless you'll lend me your shawl, Helen?"
"No, I won't."
"I must go too," said Zebedee, but he did not move and Helen did not speak. His thoughts were on her while his eyes were on the dark line of moor touching the sky; yet he thought less of her than of the strange ways of life and the force which drew him to this woman whom he had known a child so short a time ago. He wondered if what he felt were real, if the night and the mystery of the moor had not bewitched him, for she had come to him at night out of the darkness with the wind whistling round her. It was so easy, as he knew, for a solitary being to fasten eagerly on another, like a beaten boat to the safety of a buoy, but while he thus admonished himself, he had no genuine doubt. He knew that she was what he wanted: her youth, her wisdom, her smoothness, her serenity, and the many things which made her, even the stubbornness which underlay her calm.
Into these reflections her voice came loudly, calling him from the heights.
"I do wish you wouldn't keep Eliza. She's a most unsuitable person to look after you."