“I don’t know.” He dropped his eyes again moodily, and she found her own resting upon the silvery gleam of his bent head. “Life can be pretty damnable,” he said, “most particularly to those who have a sense of duty.”
“It is more damnable if we rebel,” said Frances quietly.
“You speak as one who knows,” he said.
“Yes. I do know.” She uttered the words with conviction. “I have been a rebel. But that is over. I am going back now to work in the furrows—if a place can be found for me.”
He frowned at her words. “Those infernal furrows! We plough our very souls into the soil! And to what end? Of what use?”
“So you are a rebel too!” said Frances, with the suspicion of a smile.
He threw her his sudden, challenging look, and she thought he was angry. But in a moment, sombrely, with eyes downcast, he made answer. “Yes, I am a rebel too.”
There fell a silence between them that was curiously sympathetic. Frances reflected later that it was that silence that banished all her former embarrassment. She knew when he spoke again that it would not be as a stranger. Somehow they had ceased to be strangers.
He looked up at her again at length. “Miss Thorold, I want to ask you something, and I don’t know how to put it. I’ve lived among clods too long to express myself with much delicacy. Will you make allowances for that?”
She met his look with frankness. “You do not need to ask me that,” she said.