on imperfect understanding, dim appreciation.
She used to read Italian to me--first the Italian, then the English--and
I thought it, as often as not, a bore to have to listen to her!
Thank Heaven, I have the book she used, and can now go over the pieces,
and try to recall her voice.'

The butterfly was gone, but the bee still hummed about them. The hot
afternoon air was unstirred by any breeze.

'How glad I am,' Wilfrid exclaimed when he had brooded for a few
moments, 'that I happened to see you as I rode past! I should have
wandered restlessly about the house in vain, seeking for some one to
talk to. And you listen so patiently. It is pleasant to be here and talk
so freely of things I have always had to keep in my own mind. Look, do
look at that bastion of cloud over the sycamore! What glorious gradation
of tints! What a snowy crown!'

'That is a pretty spray,' he added, holding to her one that he had
plucked.

She looked at it; then, as he still held It out, took it from him. The
exquisite fingers touched his own redder and coarser ones.

'Have you friends in Dunfield?' he asked.

'Friends?'

'Any real friend, I mean--any girl who gives you real companionship?'

'Scarcely that.'

'How shall you spend your time when you are not deep in electrics? What
do you mean to read these holidays?'

'Chiefly German, I think. I have only just begun to read it.'

'And I can't read it at all. Now and then I make a shot at the meaning
of a note in a German edition of some classical author, every time
fretting at my ignorance. But there is so endlessly much to do, and a
day is so short.'

'Isn't it hateful,' he broke forth, 'this enforced idleness of mine? To
think that weeks and weeks go by and I remain just where I was, when the
loss of an hour used to seem to me an irreparable misfortune. I have
such an appetite for knowledge, surely the unhappiest gift a man can be
endowed with it leads to nothing but frustration. Perhaps the appetite
weakens as one grows in years; perhaps the sphere of one's keener
interests contracts; I hope it may be so. At times I cannot work--I
mean, I could not--for a sense of the vastness of the field before me.
I should like you to see my rooms at Balliol. Shelves have long since
refused to take another volume; floor, tables, chairs, every spot is
heaped. And there they lie; hosts I have scarcely looked into, many I
shall never have time to take up to the end of my days.'

'You have the s