Last night, in the comfortless darkness of Hunter's Spinney, he had
seemed for a little while to be a fellow-fugitive of hers, one of the
defenceless, fleeing from the vague, unknown power that she feared.
Then she had pitied him--self-forgetfully, fiercely--gathered his head
to her breast as she so often gathered Foxy's. But now he seemed to
have forgotten--seemed once more to be of the swift and strong ones
that rode down small creatures.

She sobbed afresh.

'Look here, Hazel,' said he, in a tone that he intended to be kind but
firm--'look here: I'm not angry with you, only you must leave Vessons
alone, you know.'

'You want that old fellow more than you want me!'

'Don't be silly! He has his uses; you have yours.'

He spoke with a quite unconscious brutality; he voiced the theory of
his class and his political party, which tacitly or openly asserted
that woman, servants, and animals were in the world for their benefit.

'I'm not grass to be trod on,' said Hazel, 'and if you canna be
civil-spoken, I'll go.'

'You can't,' he replied, 'not now.'

She knew it was true, and the knowledge that her own physical nature
had proved traitorous to her freedom enraged her the more.