But now his heart swelled proudly at the thought of the old country--of all that she had endured since then.

He had thought England altered and very much for the worse, when he was in London on his two brief "leaves" during the War, but now he knew how unchanged his country was--in the things that really matter....
When he had come back for good, this summer, he had looked forward to an easy, selfish life--the sort of life certain men whom he had envied as a boy used to lead before the war.
Radmore knew, as every man who has lived to the age of thirty-two must know, that marriage brings with it certain cares, responsibilities, and troubles, and so he had deliberately made up his mind to avoid marriage, though he had been conscious the while that if he fell violently in love, then, perhaps, half knowing all the time that he was a fool, he might find himself pushed into marriage with some foolish girl, or what was perchance more likely, with a pretty widow.
To-night he realised with a sort of shame that there were moments--he was glad that they were only moments--when he felt uneasily yet strongly attracted to Enid Crofton, and that though he knew how selfish, how self-absorbed and, yes, how cruel she could be.

For well he knew she had been cruel to her elderly husband.

He was sorry now that she had come to Beechfield.

She had become an irritating, disturbing element in his life.
Radmore had looked at every eligible property within a radius of twenty miles of Old Place, but though some of them did not fall far short of the ideal he had in his mind, he hadn't felt as if he wanted any of them.
They were too trim, too new--in a word, too suburban.