the soil and at the same time leaning strongly back
upon the dry bank. Thus her body was strung and braced tightly so that
she seemed to him to be one strong curve against the ground. And yet
she was not strained uneasily and her limbs were all fine sweep and
rhythm. He drank in the exquisite grace of her fragility. Everything
about her was brown, her hair, her eyes, her borrowed coat, her long
boots vanishing beneath brown tweed, even the feather in her adorable
hat. Against the brown couch of the bank the various tints joined in a
sombre harmony.

"You mustn't stare," she said suddenly. "It's rude."

"How can I help it?" he answered.

"Easily. I'm not a country girl and I'm not at all attractive in this
get-up. I hate it. Great, clumsy boots!"

"You mustn't say that. You're just perfect like this. It seems so
rotten that you should be dragged away from it all and made to do the
world's drudgery and not see these places. You do fit into them,
whatever you may say."

She turned and looked right into his eyes. "Dear boy," she said, "you
mustn't take me too seriously. I'm quite happy. You mustn't worry
about me."

"I can't help it," he broke out. "It's in me to feel for you, to hate
the waste of you, to want you happier and stronger and getting more out
of things and more out of the things you do get." He told her of his
hopes and fears and how she had affected them and drawn him out of
them. She had taught him not to grumble about an excellent fortune.
And he began to tell her of her own perfection, but she stopped him.

"It's very, very nice of you to care about what becomes of me," she
said. "I think you exaggerate my wasted capacities: in fact I know you
do. But whether or not you're right about me, I know I'm right about
you."

"And what about me?"

"That you aren't in love with me at all. You're rather lonely and
afraid of the future and perhaps, well, sentimental. It's nothing to
be ashamed of. It shows that you're generous, because you're trying to
get rid of your own despair by trying to share mine, which doesn't
exist as a matter of fact. You're a little in love with love and very
young and very nice. And now I'm getting cold so please take me home
and be quite honest with yourself."

As he walked back with her he said very little. Against his conscience
he was angry, angry at what he knew was his own humiliation. She had
been so damnably maternal and--worse still--so damn