e, who were always getting up French plays for
bazaars, or Chrissie, who played the violin, for the earth held nothing
to vex the sturdiness of these young women except the profligacy with
which it offered its people attractions competitive with bazaars and
violin solos. But he thought it unlikely that any occasion would have
evoked from them this serene despair, which was no more irritable than
that which is known by the nightingale. It was impossible that they
could shed such tears as smudged her bright colours now, such exquisite
distillations of innocent grief at the wasting of the youth of which she
was so innocently proud, and generous rage at the decrying of a name
that was neither relative nor friend nor employer but merely a maker of
beauty. Without doubt she lived in a lonely world, where tears were shed
for other things than the gift of gold, and where one could perform
these simplicities before a witness without fear of contempt, because
human intercourse went only to the tune of charity and pity. Suddenly he
wanted to enter into this world; not indeed with the intention of
naturalising himself as its inhabitant nor with the intention of staying
there for ever, but as a navvy might stop on his way to work and refresh
his horny sweating body by a swim in a sunny pool. He felt a thirst, a
thing that stopped the breath for her pity. And although his desire was
but for participation in kindness, his instinct for conformity was so
suspicious of her vividness that he felt furtive and red-eared while he
searched in the purse of his experiences to find the coin that would
admit him to her world. The search at first was vain, for most of them
that he cared to remember were mere manifestations of the kind of
qualities that are mentioned in testimonials. But presently he gripped
the disappointment that would buy him her pity.

He said, "I'm right sorry for you, Miss Melville. But you know ... We
all have our troubles."

She raised her eyebrows.

"I wanted to go into the Navy."

"You did? Would your father not let you?" She said it in her red-headed
"My-word-if-I'd-been-there" way.

"Aye, he would have liked it fine."

"What was it then?" She leaned forward and almost crooned at him. "What
was it then?"

His speech became more clipped. "My eyes."

"Your eyes!" she breathed. He suddenly became a person to her. "I never
thought."

"I'm as short-sighted as a bat."

"They look all right." She frowned at them as