Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/107

Rh and interests at home that one would miss. Besides, you feel somebody in your own countryside, and you’re nothing in a foreign part, I expect.”

“But you’re going?”

“What is there to stop here for? The valley is all running wild and unprofitable. You’ve no freedom for thinking of what the other folks think of you, and everything round you keeps the same, and so you can’t change yourself—because everything you look at brings up the same old feeling, and stops you from feeling fresh things. And what is there that’s worth anything?—What’s worth having in my life?”

“I thought,” said I, “your comfort was worth having.”

He sat still and did not answer.

“What’s shaken you out of your nest?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve not felt the same since that row with Annable. And Lettie said to me: ‘Here, you can’t live as you like—in any way or circumstance. You’re like a bit out of those coloured marble mosaics in the hall, you have to fit in your own set, fit into your own pattern, because you’re put there from the first. But you don’t want to be like a fixed bit of a mosaic—you want to fuse into life, and melt and mix with the rest of folk, to have some things burned out of you——’ She was downright serious.”

“Well, you need not believe her. When did you see her?”

“She came down on Wednesday, when I was getting the apples in the morning. She climbed a tree with me, and there was a wind, that was why I was