One winter morning, Connie and Clifford go for a walk in the woods on their estate. When they go out together, Connie pushes Clifford in his wheelchair. Clifford is very moved by the natural world, and expresses his longing for the grounds of the estate to stay forever protected and unchanging. He tells Connie that “if some of the old England isn’t preserved, there’ll be no England at all […] and we who have this kind of property, and the feeling for it, must preserve it” (43). Clifford also expresses his regret that he will never have a child and that there will be no one to inherit his family estate.

Clifford mentions that, given that he cannot father a biological child, he would not mind if Connie conceived a child with another man. He believes that if they raised the child together, it would be as if it were their own. Connie is startled by this idea, and asks Clifford if it matters what type of man she were to have an affair with. He says that he trusts Connie’s judgement. Clifford also tells her that he would not want to know if Connie were sleeping with another man.

As Clifford and Connie are speaking, they come upon a man walking in the woods with a dog.