ee them--especially you--I
want to please you--I do really. So, you see, that was all. You MIGHT
forgive me, Sylvia!"

Something over the wall, a rustling, a scattering in the fern--deer, no
doubt! And again he said eagerly, softly:

"You might be nice to me, Sylvia; you really might."

Very quickly, turning her head away, she said:

"It isn't that any more. It's--it's something else."

"What else?"

"Nothing--only, that I don't count--now--"

He knelt down beside her. What did she mean? But he knew well enough.

"Of course, you count! Most awfully! Oh, don't be unhappy! I hate
people being unhappy. Don't be unhappy, Sylvia!" And he began gently to
stroke her arm. It was all strange and troubled within him; one thing
only plain--he must not admit anything! As if reading that thought, her
blue eyes seemed suddenly to search right into him. Then she pulled some
blades of grass, and began plaiting them.

"SHE counts."

Ah! He was not going to say: She doesn't! It would be caddish to say
that. Even if she didn't count--Did she still?--it would be mean and
low. And in his eyes just then there was the look that had made his
tutor compare him to a lion cub in trouble.

Sylvia was touching his arm.

"Mark!"

"Yes."

"Don't!"

He got up and took his rod. What was the use? He could not stay there
with her, since he could not--must not speak.

"Are you going?"

"Yes."

"Are you angry? PLEASE don't be angry with me."

He felt a choke in his throat, bent down to her hand, and kissed it; then
shouldered his rod, and marched away. Looking back once, he saw her
still sitting there, gazing after him, forlorn, by that great stone. It
seemed to him, then, there was nowhere he could go; nowhere except among
the birds and beasts and trees, who did not mind even if you were all
mixed up and horrible inside. He lay down in the grass on the bank. He
could see the tiny trout moving round and round the stones; swallows came
all about him, flying very low; a hornet, too, bore him company for a
little. But he could take interest in nothing; it was as if his spirit
were in prison. It would have been nice, indeed, to be that water, never
staying, passing, passing; or wind, touching everything, never caught.
To be able to do nothing without hurting someone--that was what was so
ghastly. If only one were like a flower, that just sprang up and lived
its life all to itself, and died. But whatever he