And in the autumn they were married.
Aggie left the sweet gardens, the white roads and green fields of Queningford, to live in a side street in Camden Town, in a creaking little villa built of sulphurous yellow brick furred with soot.
They had come back from their brilliant fortnight on the south coast, and were standing together in the atrocious bow-window of their little sitting room looking out on the street. A thick gray rain was falling, and a dust-cart was in sight.
“Aggie,” he said, “I’m afraid you’ll miss the country.”
She said nothing; she was lost in thought.
“It looks rather a brute of a place, doesn’t it? But it won’t be so bad when the rain clears off. And you know, dear, there are the museums and picture-galleries in town, and there’ll be the concerts, and lectures on all sorts of interesting subjects, two or three times a week. Then there’s our Debating Society at Hampstead—just a few of us who meet together to discuss big questions. Every month it meets, and you’ll get to know all the intellectual people—”
Aggie nodded her head at each exciting item of the programme as he reeled it off. His heart smote him; he felt that he hadn’t prepared her properly for Camden Town. He thought she was mourning the first perishing of her illusions.
His voice fell, humbly. “And I really think, in time, you know, you won’t find it quite so bad.”
She turned on him the face of one risen rosy from the embraces of her dream. She put a hand on each of his shoulders, and looked at him with shining eyes.
“Oh, Arthur, dear, it’s all too beautiful. I couldn’t say anything, because I was so happy. Come, and let’s look at everything all over again.”