tween the two parties than
people generally allow."

There was a pause, which did not come on Rachel's side from any lack of
things to say; as usual she could not say them, and was further confused
by the fact that the time for talking probably ran short. She was
haunted by absurd jumbled ideas--how, if one went back far enough,
everything perhaps was intelligible; everything was in common; for the
mammoths who pastured in the fields of Richmond High Street had turned
into paving stones and boxes full of ribbon, and her aunts.

"Did you say you lived in the country when you were a child?" she asked.

Crude as her manners seemed to him, Richard was flattered. There could
be no doubt that her interest was genuine.

"I did," he smiled.

"And what happened?" she asked. "Or do I ask too many questions?"

"I'm flattered, I assure you. But--let me see--what happened? Well,
riding, lessons, sisters. There was an enchanted rubbish heap, I
remember, where all kinds of queer things happened. Odd, what things
impress children! I can remember the look of the place to this day.
It's a fallacy to think that children are happy. They're not; they're
unhappy. I've never suffered so much as I did when I was a child."

"Why?" she asked.

"I didn't get on well with my father," said Richard shortly. "He was
a very able man, but hard. Well--it makes one determined not to sin in
that way oneself. Children never forget injustice. They forgive heaps of
things grown-up people mind; but that sin is the unpardonable sin. Mind
you--I daresay I was a difficult child to manage; but when I think what
I was ready to give! No, I was more sinned against than sinning. And
then I went to school, where I did very fairly well; and and then, as
I say, my father sent me to both universities. . . . D'you know, Miss
Vinrace, you've made me think? How little, after all, one can tell
anybody about one's life! Here I sit; there you sit; both, I doubt not,
chock-full of the most interesting experiences, ideas, emotions; yet how
communicate? I've told you what every second person you meet might tell
you."

"I don't think so," she said. "It's the way of saying things, isn't it,
not the things?"

"True," said Richard. "Perfectly true." He paused. "When I look back
over my life--I'm forty-two--what are the great facts that stand out?
What were the revelations, if I may call them so? The misery of the poor
and--" (he hesitated and pitched over) "love!"

Upon