re was not the slightest hint of embarrassment in her manner as she
stood there--a straight, tall, young thing, grey-eyed, red-lipped, slim,
with that fresh slender smoothness of youth; clad in grey wool, hatless,
thick burnished hair rippling into a heavy knot at the nape of the
whitest neck he had ever seen.

The stiller she stood, apparently wrapped in serious inward
contemplation, the stiller he remained, as though the spell of her serene
self-absorption consigned him to silence. Once he ventured, stealthily,
to smack a mosquito, but at the echoing whack there was, in her slowly
turned face, the calm surprise of a disturbed goddess; and he felt like
saying "excuse me."

"Do they bite you?" she asked, lifting her divine eyebrows a trifle.

"Bite me! Good heavens, don't they bite you? But I don't suppose they
dare----"

"What?"

"I didn't mean 'dare' exactly," he tried to explain, feeling his ears
turning a fiery red, and wondering why on earth he should have made such
a foolish remark.

"What _did_ you mean?"

"N--nothing. I don't know. I say things and--and sometimes," he added in
a burst of confidence, "they don't seem to _mean_ anything at all." To
himself he groaned through ground teeth: "What an ass I am. What on earth
is the matter with me?"

She considered him in silence, candidly; and redder and redder grew his
ears as he saw that she was quietly inspecting him from head to foot with
an interest perfectly unembarrassed, innocently intent upon her
inspection.

Then, having finished him down to his feet, she lifted her eyes, caught
his, looked a moment straight into them, then sighed a little.

"Do you know," she said, "I ought not to have come here again."

"Why?" he asked, astonished.

"There's no use in my telling you. There was no use in my coming. Oh, I
realise that perfectly well now. And I think I'd better go----"

She lingered a moment, glanced at the stream running gold in the
afternoon light, then turned away, bidding him good-bye in a low voice.

"Are you g-going?" he blurted out, not knowing exactly what he was
saying.

She moved on in silence. He looked after her. A perfectly illogical
feeling of despair overwhelmed him.

"For Heaven's sake, don't go away!" he said.

She moved on a pace, another, more slowly, hesitated, halted, leisurely
looked back over her shoulder.

"What did you say?" she asked.

"I said--I said--I said----" but he began to stammer fearfully and could