uggage, with the young lady's relatives..."

Fyne, he looked rather downcast by then, thanked me and declined.

"There is really no one," he said, very grave.

"No one," I exclaimed.

"Practically," said curt Mrs Fyne.

And my curiosity was aroused again.

"Ah! I see. An orphan."

Mrs Fyne looked away weary and sombre, and Fyne said "Yes," impulsively
and then qualified the affirmative by the quaint statement: "To a
certain extent."

I became conscious of a languid, exhausted embarrassment, bowed to Mrs
Fyne, and went out of the cottage to be confronted outside its door by
the bespangled, cruel revelation of the Immensity of the Universe. The
night was not sufficiently advanced for the stars to have paled; and the
earth seemed to me more profoundly asleep--perhaps because I was alone
now. Not having Fyne with me to set the pace I let myself drift, rather
than walk, in the direction of the farmhouse. To drift is the only
reposeful sort of motion (ask any ship if it isn't) and therefore
consistent with thoughtfulness. And I pondered: How is one an orphan
"to a certain extent"?

No amount of solemnity could make such a statement other than bizarre.
What a strange condition to be in. Very likely one of the parents only
was dead? But no; it couldn't be, since Fyne had said just before that
"there was really no one" to communicate with. No one! And then
remembering Mrs Fyne's snappy "Practically" my thoughts fastened upon
that lady as a more tangible object of speculation.

I wondered--and wondering I doubted--whether she really understood
herself the theory she had propounded to me. Everything may be said--
indeed ought to be said--providing we know how to say it. She probably
did not. She was not intelligent enough for that. She had no knowledge
of the world. She had got hold of words as a child might get hold of
some poisonous pills and play with them for "dear, tiny little marbles."
No! The domestic-slave daughter of Carleon Anthony and the little Fyne
of the Civil Service (that flower of civilisation) were not intelligent
people. They were commonplace, earnest, without smiles and without
guile. But he had his solemnities and she had her reveries, her lurid,
violent, crude reveries. And I thought with some sadness that all these
revolts and indignations, all these protests, revulsions of feeling,
pangs of suffering and of rage, expressed but the uneasiness of sensual
beings trying for their