seem always to
be hunting for something in your mind, and it slips away from me
always--always. I suppose it's because we're two different beings, and
no two beings can ever know each other in this world, not altogether.
We're what the Chevalier calls 'separate entities.' I seem to understand
his odd, wise talk better lately. He said the other day: 'Lonely we
come into the world, and lonely we go out of it.' That's what I mean. It
makes me shudder sometimes, that part of us which lives alone for ever.
We go running on as happy as can be, like Biribi there in the garden,
and all at once we stop short at a hedge, just as he does there--a hedge
just too tall to look over and with no foothold for climbing. That's
what I want so much; I want to look over the Hedge."

When she spoke like this to Philip, as she sometimes did, she seemed
quite unconscious that he was a listener, it was rather as if he
were part of her and thinking the same thoughts. To Philip she seemed
wonderful. He had never bothered his head in that way about abstract
things when he was her age, and he could not understand it in her. What
was more, he could not have thought as she did if he had tried. She had
that sort of mind which accepts no stereotyped reflection or idea;
she worked things out for herself. Her words were her own, and not
another's. She was not imitative, nor yet was she bizarre; she was
individual, simple, inquiring.

"That's the thing that hurts most in life," she added presently; "that
trying to find and not being able to--voila, what a child I am to babble
so!" she broke off with a little laugh, which had, however, a plaintive
note. There was a touch of undeveloped pathos in her character, for she
had been left alone too young, been given responsibility too soon.

He felt he must say something, and in a sympathetic tone he replied:

"Yes, Guida, but after a while we stop trying to follow and see and
find, and we walk in the old paths and take things as they are."

"Have you stopped?" she said to him wistfully. "Oh, no, not altogether,"
he replied, dropping his tones to tenderness, "for I've been trying
to peep over a hedge this afternoon, and I haven't done it yet." "Have
you?" she rejoined, then paused, for the look in his eyes embarrassed
her.... "Why do you look at me like that?" she added tremulously.

"Guida," he said earnestly, leaning towards her, "a month ago I asked
you if you would listen to me when I told you of my love