Edward considered.

'There is one man on the far side of the Mountain.'

'Pretty daughter?'

'No. He is only twenty.'

'Damn!'

He was gone.

Hazel, in the untidy room at the Callow, fed her pets and had supper in
a dream of coming peace for them all. She would not have been peaceful
if she had seen the meeting of the two men in the dusk, both wanting
her with a passion equal in suddenness and force, but different in
quality. She wanted neither. Her passion, no less intense, was for
freedom, for the wood-track, for green places where soft feet scudded
and eager eyes peered out and adventurous lives were lived up in the
tree-tops, down in the moss.

She was fascinated by Reddin; she was drawn to confide in Edward; but
she wanted neither of them. Whether or not in years to come she would
find room in her heart for human passion, she had no room for it now.
She had only room for the little creatures she befriended and for her
eager, quickly growing self. For, like her mother, she had the egoism
that is more selfless than most people's altruism--the divine egoism
that is genius.