“You admit you love me. You admit you’re having the loveliest time!”
She sat up with her elbows on her knees and her knuckles pressing her round, firm chin.
“It’s just all one holiday,” she said.
“I did some work last month.”
He had planned three impossible houses and made a most amusing cardboard model of one of them. She disregarded this plea.
“When we came up here people were working in the fields. Even that pretty little girl among the bushes was looking after sheep.”
“By Jove! I wish I could paint her—and those Holman Hunt-faced sheep of hers. It’s tantalizing to be able to see—and yet not to have the—the expressive gift....”
“Things are going on now, Arthur. Down there in the valley along that white road, people are going and coming.... There is a busy little train now.... Things are happening. Things are going to happen. And the work that goes on! The hard work! Today—there are thousands and thousands of men in mines. Out of this sunshine....”
There was an interval. Arthur rolled over on his face to look at the minute railway and road and river bed far below at the bottom of a deep lake of pellucid blue air.
“I don’t agree with you,” he said at last.