what eyes she viewed this visitor who embodied all the rebellious
under-side of life, all that was absent in herself.

"Dick," she said to him one day, "you never talk to me of Monsieur
Ferrand."

"Do you want to talk of him?"

"Don't you think that he's improved?"

"He's fatter."

Antonia looked grave.

"No, but really?"

"I don't know," said Shelton; "I can't judge him."

Antonia turned her face away, and something in her attitude alarmed him.

"He was once a sort of gentleman," she said; "why shouldn't he become one
again?"

Sitting on the low wall of the kitchen-garden, her head was framed by
golden plums. The sun lay barred behind the foliage of the holm oak, but
a little patch filtering through a gap had rested in the plum-tree's
heart. It crowned the girl. Her raiment, the dark leaves, the red wall,
the golden plums, were woven by the passing glow to a block of pagan
colour. And her face above it, chaste, serene, was like the scentless
summer evening. A bird amongst the currant bushes kept a little chant
vibrating; and all the plum-tree's shape and colour seemed alive.

"Perhaps he does n't want to be a gentleman," said Shelton.

Antonia swung her foot.

"How can he help wanting to?"

"He may have a different philosophy of life."

Antonia was slow to answer.

"I know nothing about philosophies of life," she said at last.

Shelton answered coldly,

"No two people have the same."

With the falling sun-glow the charm passed off the tree. Chilled and
harder, yet less deep, it was no more a block of woven colour, warm and
impassive, like a southern goddess; it was now a northern tree, with a
grey light through its leaves.

"I don't understand you in the least," she said; "everyone wishes to be
good."

"And safe?" asked Shelton gently.

Antonia stared.

"Suppose," he said--"I don't pretend to know, I only suppose--what
Ferrand really cares for is doing things differently from other people?
If you were to load him with a character and give him money on condition
that he acted as we all act, do you think he would accept it?"

"Why not?"

"Why are n't cats dogs; or pagans Christians?"

Antonia slid down from the wall.

"You don't seem to think there 's any use in trying," she said, and
turned away.

Shelton made a movement as if he would go after her, and then stood
still, watching her figure slowly pass, her head outlined above the wall,
her hands turned back across her narrow