ng limestone wall. These bushes were heavy with dew.
There were also concealed mudholes in there. We crept and tumbled and
felt about with our hands along the ground. We got wet, scratched, and
plastered with mire all over our nether garments. Fyne fell suddenly
into a strange cavity--probably a disused lime-kiln. His voice uplifted
in grave distress sounded more than usually rich, solemn and profound.
This was the comic relief of an absurdly dramatic situation. While
hauling him out I permitted myself to laugh aloud at last. Fyne, of
course, didn't.

I need not tell you that we found nothing after a most conscientious
search. Fyne even pushed his way into a decaying shed half-buried in
dew-soaked vegetation. He struck matches, several of them too, as if to
make absolutely sure that the vanished girl-friend of his wife was not
hiding there. The short flares illuminated his grave, immovable
countenance while I let myself go completely and laughed in peals.

I asked him if he really and truly supposed that any sane girl would go
and hide in that shed; and if so why?

Disdainful of my mirth he merely muttered his basso-profundo
thankfulness that we had not found her anywhere about there. Having
grown extremely sensitive (an effect of irritation) to the tonalities, I
may say, of this affair, I felt that it was only an imperfect, reserved,
thankfulness, with one eye still on the possibilities of the several
ponds in the neighbourhood. And I remember I snorted, I positively
snorted, at that poor Fyne.

What really jarred upon me was the rate of his walking. Differences in
politics, in ethics and even in aesthetics need not arouse angry
antagonism. One's opinion may change; one's tastes may alter--in fact
they do. One's very conception of virtue is at the mercy of some
felicitous temptation which may be sprung on one any day. All these
things are perpetually on the swing. But a temperamental difference,
temperament being immutable, is the parent of hate. That's why
religious quarrels are the fiercest of all. My temperament, in matters
pertaining to solid land, is the temperament of leisurely movement, of
deliberate gait. And there was that little Fyne pounding along the road
in a most offensive manner; a man wedded to thick-soled, laced boots;
whereas my temperament demands thin shoes of the lightest kind. Of
course there could never have been question of friendship between us;
but under the provocatio