up to the north-west frontier. He was ill; he has a pension. He didn't come out of the army till last year, I believe, and then, naturally, it isn't easy for a man like that to get back to his own level. He's bound to flounder. But he does his duty all right, as far as I'm concerned. Only I'm not having any of the Lieutenant Mellors touch."
"How could they make him an officer when he speaks broad Derbyshire?"
"He doesn't . . . except by fits and starts. He can speak perfectly well, for him. I suppose he has an idea if he's come down to the ranks again, he'd better speak as the ranks speak."
"Why didn't you tell me about him before?"
"Oh, I've no patience with these romances. They're the ruin of all order. It's a thousand pities they ever happened."
Connie was inclined to agree. What was the good of discontented people who fitted in nowhere?
In the spell of fine weather Clifford, too, decided to go to the wood. The wind was cold, but not so tiresome, and the sunshine was like life itself, warm and full.
"It's amazing," said Connie, "how different one feels when there's a really fresh fine day. Usually one feels the very air is half dead. People are killing the very air."
"Do you think people are doing it?" he asked.
"I do. The steam of so much boredom, and discontent and anger out of all the people, just kills the vitality in the air. I'm sure of it."
"Perhaps some condition of the atmosphere lowers the vitality of the people?" he said.
"No, it's man that poisons the universe," she asserted.
"Fouls his own nest," remarked Clifford.
The chair puffed on. In the hazel copse catkins were hanging pale gold, and in sunny places the wood-anemones were wide open, as if exclaiming with the joy of life, just as good as in past days, when people could exclaim along with them. They had a faint scent of apple-blossom. Connie gathered a few for Clifford.
He took them and looked at them curiously.
"Thou still unravished bride of quietness," he quoted. "It seems to fit flowers so much better than Greek vases."
