"Oh, yes," said Barbara, wonderingly.
He had his elbows on the top rail of the gate, and looked downward at the muddy way, rough with the hoof marks of cattle. "You see," he explained, "I want to say the kind of thing one says behind a—a landscape's back."
"I'm sorry to hear it," she answered. She had drawn a little to one side, and had laid a small gloved hand on one of the gate posts. Somebody, many years before, had deeply cut a clumsy M on the cracked and roughened surface of the wood. The letter was as grey and as weather-worn as the rest. Barbara touched it delicately with a finger-tip, and followed its ungainly outline. Probably it was his own initial that the rustic had hacked, standing where he stood, but she recognised the possibility that the rough carving might be the utterance of the great secret of joy and pain, and the touch was almost a caress.
"Some people follow their dreams through life, and never get more than a glimpse of them, even as dreams," said Harding, slowly. "Well, I have seen mine. I have had a good look at it. I know what it is like. It is dreary—it is narrow—cold—hideous."
"Oh!" cried Barbara, as if his words hurt her. Then, recovering herself, "I'm sorry you dislike it so much. Well, you must give it up, mustn't you?"
He laughed. "Life without a fancy, without a desire?" he said.
"Find something else to wish for."
"What? If there were anything else, should I care twopence for Mitchelhurst? No, it is my dream still—a dream I'm never likely to realise, but the only possible dream for me. Only now I know how poor and dull my highest success would be."
"You had better have stayed away," said the girl.