"And wouldn't she join?" Paul asked.

"She didn't get the chance; we never told her; we wasn't going to have
HER bossing THIS show. We didn't WANT her to join."

Paul laughed at the woman. He was much moved. At last he must go. She
was very close to him. Suddenly she flung her arms round his neck and
kissed him vehemently.

"I can give you a kiss to-day," she said apologetically. "You've looked
so white, it's made my heart ache."

Paul kissed her, and left her. Her arms were so pitifully thin that his
heart ached also.

That day he met Clara as he ran downstairs to wash his hands at
dinner-time.

"You have stayed to dinner!" he exclaimed. It was unusual for her.

"Yes; and I seem to have dined on old surgical-appliance stock. I MUST
go out now, or I shall feel stale india-rubber right through."

She lingered. He instantly caught at her wish.

"You are going anywhere?" he asked.

They went together up to the Castle. Outdoors she dressed very plainly,
down to ugliness; indoors she always looked nice. She walked with
hesitating steps alongside Paul, bowing and turning away from him.
Dowdy in dress, and drooping, she showed to great disadvantage. He could
scarcely recognise her strong form, that seemed to slumber with power.
She appeared almost insignificant, drowning her stature in her stoop, as
she shrank from the public gaze.

The Castle grounds were very green and fresh. Climbing the precipitous
ascent, he laughed and chattered, but she was silent, seeming to brood
over something. There was scarcely time to go inside the squat, square
building that crowns the bluff of rock. They leaned upon the wall where
the cliff runs sheer down to the Park. Below them, in their holes in the
sandstone, pigeons preened themselves and cooed softly. Away down upon
the boulevard at the foot of the rock, tiny trees stood in their
own pools of shadow, and tiny people went scurrying about in almost
ludicrous importance.

"You feel as if you could scoop up the folk like tadpoles, and have a
handful of them," he said.

She laughed, answering:

"Yes; it is not necessary to get far off in order to see us
proportionately. The trees are much more significant."

"Bulk only," he said.

She laughed cynically.

Away beyond the boulevard the thin stripes of the metals showed upon the
railway-track, whose margin was crowded with little stacks of timber,
beside which smoking toy engines fussed. Then the silver string of the
cana