-five."

"That IS old."

He restrained the words: "Of course it's old to a kid like you!" And,
instead, he looked at her. Was she exactly a kid? She seemed quite tall
(for a girl) and not very thin, and there was something frank and soft
about her face, and as if she wanted you to be nice to her.

"Is she very pretty?"

This time he did not go red, such was the disturbance that question
made in him. If he said: "Yes," it was like letting the world know his
adoration; but to say anything less would be horrible, disloyal. So he
did say: "Yes," listening hard to the tone of his own voice.

"I thought she was. Do you like her very much?" Again he struggled with
that thing in his throat, and again said: "Yes."

He wanted to hate this girl, yet somehow could not--she looked so soft
and confiding. She was staring before her now, her lips still just
parted, so evidently THAT had not been because of Bolero's pulling; they
were pretty all the same, and so was her short, straight little nose,
and her chin, and she was awfully fair. His thoughts flew back to that
other face--so splendid, so full of life. Suddenly he found himself
unable to picture it--for the first time since he had started on his
journey it would not come before him.

"Oh! Look!"

Her hand was pulling at his arm. There in the field over the hedge a
buzzard hawk was dropping like a stone.

"Oh, Mark! Oh! Oh! It's got it!"

She was covering her face with both her hands, and the hawk, with a
young rabbit in its claws, was sailing up again. It looked so beautiful
that he did not somehow feel sorry for the rabbit; but he wanted to
stroke and comfort her, and said:

"It's all right, Sylvia; it really is. The rabbit's dead already, you
know. And it's quite natural."

She took her hands away from a face that looked just as if she were
going to cry.

"Poor little rabbit! It was such a little one!"

XII

On the afternoon of the day following he sat in the smoking-room with
a prayer book in his hand, and a frown on his forehead, reading the
Marriage Service. The book had been effectively designed for not
spoiling the figure when carried in a pocket. But this did not matter,
for even if he could have read the words, he would not have known what
they meant, seeing that he was thinking how he could make a certain
petition to a certain person sitting just behind at a large bureau with
a sliding top, examining artificial flies.

He fixed at last upon thi