ule-of-thumb.

"But surely every one needs time to think--to consider," she began
gently. "Don't you find it so?"

"To plan out the day, do you mean?" said Ann, moving to a new patch.
"I generally do that at night before I go to sleep."

"No, no," she explained, "not the day's work--that must be done, of
course--but the whole Scheme, life, and one's relation to it..."

"I don't feel any call to study that out," said Ann. "I haven't the
headpiece for it."

"No, but some people have, and so----"

"Have you?" said Ann.

She bit her lip.

"It is surely every woman's duty to cultivate herself as far as she
can," she began. "Nobody denies that nowadays."

Ann was silent.

"Don't you agree with me?" the woman persisted. "You surely know what
I mean?"

"Oh, yes, I know what you mean, well enough," Ann said at last. "I
know you have to cultivate strawberries, if you want to get more of
'em--and bigger. The question is, what do you get out of it?"

A flood of explanations pressed to her lips, but just as they brimmed
over, some quick surmise of Ann's shrewd replies choked them back.
After all, what had she got out of it? What that she could show? She
rose slowly and walked back to her room, where the bath, fresh,
uncreased clothes, and Hester's deft ministry waited ready for her.
Later, she lay again in the balcony chair, not so soothed by her little
pile of books as she had looked to be. Beautiful, pellucid thought,
deep-flowing philosophies, knife-edged epigrams and measured verse lay
to her hand, but they seemed unreal, somehow, and their music echoed
like meaningless words shouted, for the echo merely, in empty halls.
She drowsed discontentedly and woke from a dream of the grey lady to
see her stretched in the companion chair, herself asleep, it seemed,
for it was only after a long doubtful stare from the other that she
opened her great dark eyes.

"And I almost thought I had dreamed of meeting you before! Wasn't it
absurd? I am only now realising how ill I have been--things were all
so confused... I find that I can't even reply to Miss Ann as I ought
to be able to, when she scorns the effects of culture!"

"Does Ann scorn culture?" the grey lady asked in mild surprise. "I
never knew that."

"She scorns the leisure that goes to produce it, anyway."

"Did you give her a concrete instance of any special culture?"

She moved uneasily in her chair.

"Oh--concrete, _concrete_!" she repeated dep