and seeing its
uncomprehending expression, "let us go, it is getting late. Doss is
anxious for his breakfast also," she added, wheeling round and calling
to the dog, who was endeavouring to unearth a mole, an occupation to
which he had been zealously addicted from the third month, but in which
he had never on any single occasion proved successful.

Waldo shouldered his bag, and Lyndall walked on before in silence, with
the dog close to her side. Perhaps she thought of the narrowness of
the limits within which a human soul may speak and be understood by its
nearest of mental kin, of how soon it reaches that solitary land of
the individual experience, in which no fellow footfall is ever heard.
Whatever her thoughts may have been, she was soon interrupted. Waldo
came close to her, and standing still, produced with awkwardness from
his breast-pocket a small carved box.

"I made it for you," he said, holding it out.

"I like it," she said, examining it carefully.

The workmanship was better than that of the grave-post. The flowers that
covered it were delicate, and here and there small conical protuberances
were let in among them. She turned it round critically. Waldo bent over
it lovingly.

"There is one strange thing about it," he said earnestly, putting a
finger on one little pyramid. "I made it without these, and I felt
something was wrong; I tried many changes, and at last I let these
in, and then it was right. But why was it? They are not beautiful in
themselves."

"They relieve the monotony of the smooth leaves, I suppose."

He shook his head as over a weighty matter.

"The sky is monotonous," he said, "when it is blue, and yet it is
beautiful. I have thought of that often; but it is not monotony, and
it is not variety makes beauty. What is it? The sky, and your face, and
this box--the same thing is in them all, only more in the sky and in
your face. But what is it?"

She smiled.

"So you are at your old work still. Why, why, why? What is the reason?
It is enough for me," she said, "if I find out what is beautiful and
what is ugly, what is real and what is not. Why it is there, and over
the final cause of things in general, I don't trouble myself; there must
be one, but what is it to me? If I howl to all eternity I shall never
get hold of it; and if I did I might be no better off. But you Germans
are born with an aptitude for borrowing; you can't help yourselves. You
must sniff after reasons, just as that