e, nor any shifting blur of
white at her window below. All was dark, remote--still sweet with the
scent of something jolly. And then he saw what that something was. All
over the wall below his window white jessamine was in flower--stars, not
only in the sky. Perhaps the sky was really a field of white flowers;
and God walked there, and plucked the stars....

The next morning there was a letter on his plate when he came down to
breakfast. He couldn't open it with Sylvia on one side of him, and old
Tingle on the other. Then with a sort of anger he did open it. He need
not have been afraid. It was written so that anyone might have read;
it told of a climb, of bad weather, said they were coming home. Was
he relieved, disturbed, pleased at their coming back, or only uneasily
ashamed? She had not got his second letter yet. He could feel old Tingle
looking round at him with those queer sharp twinkling eyes of hers, and
Sylvia regarding him quite frankly. And conscious that he was growing
red, he said to himself: 'I won't!' And did not. In three days they
would be at Oxford. Would they come on here at once? Old Tingle was
speaking. He heard Sylvia answer: "No, I don't like 'bopsies.' They're
so hard!" It was their old name for high cheekbones. Sylvia certainly
had none, her cheeks went softly up to her eyes.

"Do you, Mark?"

He said slowly:

"On some people."

"People who have them are strong-willed, aren't they?"

Was SHE--Anna--strong-willed? It came to him that he did not know at all
what she was.

When breakfast was over and he had got away to his old greenhouse, he
had a strange, unhappy time. He was a beast, he had not been thinking of
her half enough! He took the letter out, and frowned at it horribly. Why
could he not feel more? What was the matter with him? Why was he such
a brute--not to be thinking of her day and night? For long he stood,
disconsolate, in the little dark greenhouse among the images of his
beasts, the letter in his hand.

He stole out presently, and got down to the river unobserved.
Comforting--that crisp, gentle sound of water; ever so comforting to
sit on a stone, very still, and wait for things to happen round you. You
lost yourself that way, just became branches, and stones, and water,
and birds, and sky. You did not feel such a beast. Gordy would never
understand why he did not care for fishing--one thing trying to catch
another--instead of watching and understanding what things were.