“Well, I can’t mind the exact day without looking at my memorandum-book,” replied Crick, with the same intolerable unconcern.  “And even that may be altered a bit.  He’ll bide to get a little practice in the calving out at the straw-yard, for certain.  He’ll hang on till the end of the year I should say.”

Four months or so of torturing ecstasy in his society—­of “pleasure girdled about with pain”.  After that the blackness of unutterable night.

At this moment of the morning Angel Clare was riding along a narrow lane ten miles distant from the breakfasters, in the direction of his father’s Vicarage at Emminster, carrying, as well as he could, a little basket which contained some black-puddings and a bottle of mead, sent by Mrs Crick, with her kind respects, to his parents.  The white lane stretched before him, and his eyes were upon it; but they were staring into next year, and not at the lane.  He loved her; ought he to marry her?  Dared he to marry her?  What would his mother and his brothers say?  What would he himself say a couple of years after the event?  That would depend upon whether the germs of staunch comradeship underlay the temporary emotion, or whether it were a sensuous joy in her form only, with no substratum of everlastingness.

His father’s hill-surrounded little town, the Tudor church-tower of red stone, the clump of trees near the Vicarage, came at last into view beneath him, and he rode down towards the well-known gate.  Casting a glance in the direction of the church before entering his home, he beheld standing by the vestry-door a group of girls, of ages between twelve and sixteen, apparently awaiting the arrival of some other one, who in a moment became visible; a figure somewhat older than the school-girls, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and highly-starched cambric morning-gown, with a couple of books in her hand.

Clare knew her well.  He could not be sure that she observed him; he hoped she did not, so as to render it unnecessary that he should go and speak to her, blameless creature that she was.  An overpowering reluctance to greet her made him decide that she had not seen him.  The young lady was Miss Mercy Chant, the only daughter of his father’s neighbour and friend, whom it was his parents’ quiet hope that he might wed some day.  She was great at Antinomianism and Bible-classes, and was plainly going to hold a class now.  Clare’s mind flew to the impassioned, summer-steeped heathens in the Var Vale, their rosy faces court-patched with cow-droppings; and to one the most impassioned of them all.