essed seemed oddly reluctant. "Come now," said
Desire, hitting an especially big crab, "out with it! There's no use
pretending that you don't know." Thus adjured, the self offered one
single and sulky word. The word was "Mary." "Oh, nonsense!" said Desire
hastily.

But there it was. She had forced the answer and had to make the best of
it. Her memory trailed back. Once started, it had small difficulty in
tracking her dissatisfaction to its real beginning. Everything, it
reminded her, had been perfect until she and Benis had sat upon the
hill in the sunset and talked about Mary. Something had happened then.
Like a certain ancestress she had coveted the fruit of knowledge and
knowledge had been given her. Not at once--Benis had at first been
distinctly reluctant--but by gentle persistence she had won through his
cool reserve. Abruptly and without visible reason, his attitude had
changed. He had said in that drawling voice of his, "You wish me to
talk about Mary?" And then, suddenly, he had talked.

He had told her several things. The color of Mary's hair, for instance.
Her hair was yellow. Benis had been insistent in pointing out that when
he said "yellow" he did not mean goldish or bronze, or fawn-colored or
tow-colored or Titian, but just yellow. "Do you see that patch of sky
over there where the mountain dips?" he had said. "Mary's hair was
yellow, like that."

That patch of sky, as Desire remembered it, was very beautiful. Quite
too beautiful to be compared to any-one's hair. No doubt it was only in
Benis's imagination that Mary's hair was anything like it.

But nevertheless it was there that the world had gone wrong. It was
while Benis had sat gazing into that patch of amber sky that Desire,
gazing too, had, for the first time, realized the Other. Up until then,
Mary had been an abstraction--thenceforth she was a personality. That
made all the difference. Desire, throwing shells at crabs, admitted
that, for her, there had been no Mary until she had heard that her hair
was yellow.

It was ridiculous but it was true. Mary without hair had been a gentle
and retiring shade. A phantom in whom it had been possible to take an
academic interest. But no shade has a right to hair like an amber
sunset. Desire threw a shell viciously. Very little more, she felt, and
she would positively dislike Mary!

She jumped up and stamped in the shallow water. The crabs, big and
little, scuttled away.

"Hurr-ee!" called the profess