when they had
gone for a drive down to Scheveningen by the long straight avenue of
chestnuts and limes, under whose boughs tufts of wild parsley waved
their flowers, except where the buitenplaatsen of retired merchants
blazed forth with new paint of every hue. On mounting the dune which
kept out the sea behind the village a brisk breeze greeted their faces,
and a fine sand blew up into their eyes. De Stancy screened Paula with
his umbrella as they stood with their backs to the wind, looking down
on the red roofs of the village within the sea wall, and pulling at the
long grass which by some means found nourishment in the powdery soil of
the dune.

When they had discussed the scene he continued, 'It always seems to me
that this place reflects the average mood of human life. I mean, if we
strike the balance between our best moods and our worst we shall find
our average condition to stand at about the same pitch in emotional
colour as these sandy dunes and this grey scene do in landscape.'

Paula contended that he ought not to measure everybody by himself.

'I have no other standard,' said De Stancy; 'and if my own is wrong, it
is you who have made it so. Have you thought any more of what I said at
Cologne?'

'I don't quite remember what you did say at Cologne?'

'My dearest life!' Paula's eyes rounding somewhat, he corrected the
exclamation. 'My dear Miss Power, I will, without reserve, tell it to
you all over again.'

'Pray spare yourself the effort,' she said drily. 'What has that one
fatal step betrayed me into!... Do you seriously mean to say that I am
the cause of your life being coloured like this scene of grass and sand?
If so, I have committed a very great fault!'

'It can be nullified by a word.'

'Such a word!'

'It is a very short one.'

'There's a still shorter one more to the purpose. Frankly, I believe you
suspect me to have some latent and unowned inclination for you--that you
think speaking is the only point upon which I am backward.... There now,
it is raining; what shall we do? I thought this wind meant rain.'

'Do? Stand on here, as we are standing now.'

'Your sister and my aunt are gone under the wall. I think we will walk
towards them.'

'You had made me hope,' he continued (his thoughts apparently far away
from the rain and the wind and the possibility of shelter), 'that you
might change your mind, and give to your original promise a liberal
meaning in renewing it. In brief I mean