"It was. Look here, Mrs. Robson, I've been thinking an awful lot about you lately."
One quick little indrawing of breath and she sat still as a statue.
"I know I behaved rather badly last time I was at Anderby. You were splendid to me. I shall never forget it. Then I put my foot in it so badly with Mrs. Bannister and I'm afraid you may have thought I was rude, hurrying away like that to the inn. But you know, I couldn't stay. It wouldn't have been right. It wouldn't really.... Of course you've got to oppose me, I suppose, and I've got to oppose you, and unless you give up all this"—he waved his hands at the fields around him—"I don't see how we can be anything but enemies. I'm doing my best to knock down the things you think are fine but I think are an abomination——"
"An abomination?"
"Oh, you know what I mean. Please don't misunderstand me. I don't think any the less of you because I hate the things you stand for—patronage and capitalism and the old Tory school and all that sort of thing. I think you're splendid." With his irrepressible tendency to gesture he sprang up and confronted her. "Of course I think you're splendid. Why, I——"
Mary rose too and they stood face to face between the wheat and the hedgerow. Hot waves of perfume blew from the ripening corn across their flaming cheeks. In the hawthorn tree a thrush was singing.
"Do you really mean that?" asked Mary.
"Why, of course I do!"
"Splendid, David? How splendid? What does that mean?"
The glimmering bowl of sky closed in upon them. The golden hills crouched waiting.