`I've tried hard all the time I've been thing; for a marriage would be very nice in one sense. People would talk about me and think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all that. But a husband--'

`Well!'

`Why, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever I looked up, there he'd be.'

`Of course he would - I, that is.'

`Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can't show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry - at least yet.'

`That's a terrible wooden story!'

At this criticism of her statement Bathsheba made an addition to her dignity by a slight sweep away from him.

`Upon my heart and soul I don't know what a maid can say stupider than that,' said Oak. `But dearest,' he continued in a palliative voice, `don't be like it!' Oak sighed a deep honest sigh - none the less so in that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it was rather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere. `Why won't you have me?' he appealed, creeping round the holly to reach her side.

`I cannot,' she said, retreating.

`But why?' he persisted, standing still at last in despair of ever reaching her, and facing over the bush.

`Because I don't love you.'

`Yes, but--'

She contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it was hardly ill-mannered at all. `I don't love you, she said.

`But I love you - and, as for myself, I am content to be liked.'

`O Mr Oak - that's very fine! You'd get to despise me.'

`Never,' said Mr Oak, so earnestly that he seemed to be coming, by the force of his words, straight through the bush and into her arms. `I shall do one thing in this life - one thing certain - that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.' His voice had a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly trembled.

`It seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so much!' she said with a little distress, and looking hopelessly around for some means of escape from her moral dilemma. `How I wish I hadn't run after you!' However, she seemed to have a short cut for getting back to cheerfulness and set her face to signify' archness. `It wouldn't do, Mr Oak. I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent; and you would never be able to, I know.'

Oak cast his eyes down the field in a way implying that it was useless to attempt argument.

`Mr Oak,' she said, with luminous distinctness and common sense, you are better off than I. I have hardly a penny in the world - I am staying with my aunt for my bare sustenance. I am better educated than you - and I don't love you a bit; that's my side of the case. Now yours: you are a farmer just beginning, and you ought in common prudence, if you marry at all (which you should certainly not think of doing at present) to marry a woman with money, who would stock a larger farm for you than you have now.