nothing
so often do nothing. I want you to plunge."

It thrilled him like a trumpet-blast. She took him seriously. Could he
but thank her for her divine affability! But the words would stick in
his throat, or worse still would bring other words along with them. His
breath came quickly, for he seldom spoke of his writing, and no one, not
even Ansell, had advised him to plunge.

"But do you really think that I could take up literature?"

"Why not? You can try. Even if you fail, you can try. Of course we think
you tremendously clever; and I met one of your dons at tea, and he said
that your degree was not in the least a proof of your abilities: he said
that you knocked up and got flurried in examinations. Oh!"--her cheek
flushed,--"I wish I was a man. The whole world lies before them. They
can do anything. They aren't cooped up with servants and tea parties and
twaddle. But where's this dell where the Dryad disappeared?"

"We've passed it." He had meant to pass it. It was too beautiful. All
he had read, all he had hoped for, all he had loved, seemed to quiver
in its enchanted air. It was perilous. He dared not enter it with such a
woman.

"How long ago?" She turned back. "I don't want to miss the dell. Here
it must be," she added after a few moments, and sprang up the green bank
that hid the entrance from the road. "Oh, what a jolly place!"

"Go right in if you want to see it," said Rickie, and did not offer to
go with her. She stood for a moment looking at the view, for a few steps
will increase a view in Cambridgeshire. The wind blew her dress against
her. Then, like a cataract again, she vanished pure and cool into the
dell.

The young man thought of her feelings no longer. His heart throbbed
louder and louder, and seemed to shake him to pieces. "Rickie!"

She was calling from the dell. For an answer he sat down where he was,
on the dust-bespattered margin. She could call as loud as she liked. The
devil had done much, but he should not take him to her.

"Rickie!"--and it came with the tones of an angel. He drove his fingers
into his ears, and invoked the name of Gerald. But there was no sign,
neither angry motion in the air nor hint of January mist. June--fields
of June, sky of June, songs of June. Grass of June beneath him, grass of
June over the tragedy he had deemed immortal. A bird called out of the
dell: "Rickie!"

A bird flew into the dell.

"Did you take me for the Dryad?" she asked. She was sitting