The restlessness
of the born traveller, the craving for the large and lonely spaces in
the outlandish corners of the world, the incurable intermittent fever to
be moving, ever moving amongst strange peoples and under strange
skies--these were deep-rooted qualities of the man. Passion might
obscure them for a while, but they would make their appeal in the end,
and the appeal would torture. The home would become a prison. Desires
would so clash within him, there could be no happiness. That was the
man. For herself, she looked down the slope of the hill across the brown
country. Away on the right waved the woods about Ramelton, at her feet
flashed a strip of the Lough; and this was her country; she was its
child and the sister of its people.
"No," she repeated, as she rose to her feet. Durrance rose with her. He
was still not so much disheartened as conscious of a blunder. He had put
his case badly; he should never have given her the opportunity to think
that marriage would be an interruption of his career.
"We will say good-bye here," she said, "in the open. We shall be none
the less good friends because three thousand miles hinder us from
shaking hands.
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