her sake. But I blame myself, now, for a quite detestable lack of
sincerity in pushing him on. I should not have done it if I had thought he
had a real chance with her. Life is very difficult; especially for the
well-intentioned.

Jervaise shrugged his shoulders. "It's all so infernally complicated by
this affair of Brenda's," he said.

Yet it has seemed simple enough to him, I reflected, an hour before. "Kick
_him_ and bring _her_ home," had been his ready solution of the
difficulties he thought were before us. Evidently Anne's behaviour during
our talk at the farm had had a considerable effect upon his opinions.
That, and the moon. I feel strongly inclined to include the moon--lazily
declining now towards the ambush of a tumulus-shaped hill, crowned, as is
the manner of that country, with a pert little top-knot of trees.

"Complicated or simplified?" I suggested.

"Complicated; damnably complicated," he replied irritably. "Brenda's a
little fool. It isn't as if she were in earnest."

"Then you don't honestly believe that she's in love with Banks?" I asked,
remembering his "I don't know. How can any one know," of a few minutes
earlier.

"She's so utterly unreliable--in every way," he equivocated. "She always
has been. She isn't the least like the rest of us."

"Don't you count yourself as another exception?" I asked.