"Well, why don't you let Ben farm it? Let them go off and live together, make a fresh start all on their own. I'm sure they could be happy. Connie loves farming, and they'd have the baby. Oh, I know you'd find they'd be far happier. Just those two, where they could forget what a bad start they'd made. It's cruel, it's just cruel to make that one mistake an ever-living shame to them because other people smile and sneer and insinuate, people who are probably every bit as bad but just more careful. How can they be happy like this?"
She stopped, amazed by her own temerity. Beyond the moor the last silver gleam of sunlight lay like an outstretched sword between the dark embrace of hill and sky. William Todd lay watching it for a long time before he moved. Then he said slowly:
"You seem to set great store by happiness."
She was surprised. Eagerly she tried to see his face through the growing shadows as she said:
"I do, I do. Surely it's the right of people to be happy!"
"Really? To think o' that now! Are you happy?"
"I?" Three months ago she had told herself that she was the most miserable of frustrated women, but to a stranger she would have laughed nervously and answered, "I'm all right." Somehow at Thraile and to this madman, one spoke the truth if possible. She answered thoughtfully. "I'm not sure. No, I don't think I'm happy. I've never really had any of the things I wanted most. I've never done anything I meant to do. I'm a failure, I suppose. Nobody needs me . . ."
"Well?" He cut short the flow of self-revelation, so alien to Muriel's usual habit. "And do you think that I am happy? or Meggie, my wife? or my mother there? Do you think that God Himself is happy? What then do you expect for your sister and my son, eh?"
She could answer this, but her speech came stumblingly.
"But if we see any way to make people happy. . . . They have a right to all possible happiness. Now if Ben and Connie could go to your farm at Fallowdale, they might forget—everything, and just be—happy."