She could not help it. Often she returned dull and daunted, not with him but herself; and as she began to know, from no sign of his but by her own quickened sex endowment that he cared for her, she grew faint and ashamed again. He had taught her a great deal. He seemed to be very wise and patient, but not particularly happy—rather unfinished even on some sides of his experience. There were a great many things he did not know, and he seemed not nearly as interested in life as she was, or as desirous to have it more abundantly. Johnny had evinced a much keener appetite for living and far greater future ambitions than Maynard. Lawrence was, in fact, as somebody had said, "a twilight sort of man." But it was a cool, clear, self-contained twilight that he moved in, and he appeared to see distinctly enough through it. Dinah thought it was twilight of morning rather than night. She imagined him presently emerging into a wonderful dawn, and dreamed of helping him to do so. She checked such fancies, yet they were natural to her direct temperament, and they recurred with increasing force. Her native freedom of mind broke down all barriers to private thinking, and sometimes she longed for him; then she chastened herself and planned a future without him and found it not worth remaining alive for. She began to sleep ill, but hid the signs. She plotted to see Maynard and was also skilful to conceal the fact that she did so. He always welcomed her, sometimes with a merry word, sometimes with a sad one. The milch cows grazed upon the moor now, and once or twice, sighting them a mile off upon her way home, Dinah would creep near and wait for Lawrence and the sheep dog to round them up and turn them to the valley for milking. She would hide in a thicket, or behind a boulder, and if he came would get a few precious words; but if Neddy Tutt appeared, as sometimes happened, then she would lie hid and go her way when he was gone.
She knew now that Maynard cared for her; but she discounted his every word and granted herself the very minimum. She was fearful of hoping too much, yet could not, for love's sake, hope too little. She longed to set her mind at rest upon the vital question; and at last did so. Making all allowance, and striving to chill and belittle his every word, she still could not longer doubt. He was often difficult to understand, yet some things she did now clearly comprehend. She had already seen a man in love, and though the love-making of Johnny differed very widely from that of Lawrence, though indeed Lawrence never had made a shadow of love to her, yet she knew at last, by mental and physical signs that curiously repeated Johnny's, he did love her.
She hugged this to her heart and felt that nothing else mattered, or would ever matter. For a time she even returned to her first dream and assured herself that love was enough. He might tell her some day; he might never tell her; but she knew it, and whether they came together, or lived their lives apart, the great fact would remain. Yet there was no food in any such conclusion, no life, no fertility, no peace.
She came to Ben Bamsey at this stage of her romance, for she hungered and thirsted to tell it; and to her it seemed that her foster-father ought to know. She came to him fresh from a meeting with Lawrence, for she had been, at Mr. Bamsey's wish, with a message to Falcon Farm, and she had met Maynard afterwards as she returned over the foothills of the Beacon.
The year was swinging round, and again the time had come for scything the fern, that it might ripen presently for the cattle byres.
He stopped a moment and shook hands with her.
"Just been up to see Soosie-Toosie," said Dinah. "Terrible sorry Mr. Palk's cut his hand so bad."
"Yes; it'll have to go in a sling for a bit. He thought it would mend and didn't take no great count of it, and now it's festered and will be a fortnight before it's all right."
"I wish I could help," she said. "If you was to do his work and Mr. Stockman would let me come and milk the cows for a week——"
"No, no—no need for any help. Tom can do a lot. It's only his left hand and master's turning to. He says if he can't do the work of Tom's left hand, it's a shame to him."