and almost jerkily.

"Love him?" Julia said in surprise; "no, of course not. That is where
the difference comes in, I believe; you all seem to think there is
nothing but love and love-making and kissing and cuddling. I have just
liked talking to him and I suppose he liked talking to me, as you
might some friend, or Denah some girl she knew. We never thought about
love and all that; we couldn't, you know; he belongs to a different
lot from what I do. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand," he answered, and there was a vibrant note in his
voice which was new to her. "I understand that it is you who are right
and we who are wrong--you who know good and evil and can choose, we
who suspect and think and hint, believing ill when there is none.
Rather than send you away, we should ask your forgiveness!"

"You should do nothing of the kind," Julia said decidedly, beginning
to take alarm. "I may not have been wrong in quite the way your
parents think, but I was wrong all the same. I am not good, believe
me; I am not as you are. Look at me, I am bad inwardly, and really I
am what you would condemn and despise."

She was standing in the afternoon sunlight, dark, slim, alert,
intensely alive, full of a twisty varied knowledge, a creature of
another world. She felt that he must know and recognise the gulf
between if only he would look fairly at her.

He did look fairly, but he recognised only what was in his own mind.

"You are to me a beacon--" he began.

But she, realising at last that Denah's jealousy was not after all
without foundations, cut him short.

"I am not a beacon," she said, "before you take me for a guiding light
you had better hear something about me. Do you know why I came here? I
will tell you--it was to get your blue daffodil!"

He stared at her speechless, and she found it bad to see the surprise
and almost uncomprehending pain which came into his face, as into the
face of a child unjustly smitten. But she went on resolutely: "I heard
of it in England, that it was worth a lot of money--and I wanted
money--so I came here; I meant to get a bulb and sell it."

"You meant to?" he said slowly; "but you haven't--you couldn't?"

"I could, six times over if I liked."

"But you have not."

"No. I was a fool, and you were--Oh, I can't explain; you would never
understand, and it does not matter. The thing that matters is that I
came here to get your blue daffodil."

"You must have needed money very greatl