He did not offer, however, to accompany her.
‘It is the most extraordinary tree in these parts,’ said Baruch; ‘of incalculable age and with branches spreading into a tent big enough to cover a regiment. Marshall is quite right.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Not above a couple of hundred yards further; just round the corner.’
Madge rose and looked.
‘No; it is not visible here; it stands a little way back. If you come a little further you will catch a glimpse of it.’
She followed him and presently the oak came in view. They climbed up the bank and went nearer to it. The whole vale was underneath them and part of the weald with the Sussex downs blue in the distance. Baruch was not much given to raptures over scenery, but the indifference of Nature to the world’s turmoil always appealed to him.
‘You are not now discontented because you cannot serve under Mazzini?’
‘Not now.’
There was nothing in her reply on the face of it of any particular consequence to Baruch. She might simply have intended that the beauty of the fair landscape extinguished her restlessness, or that she saw her own unfitness, but neither of these interpretations presented itself to him.