en with the frankness of a child, with the spontaneous
confidence of the pure child-nature, which instinctively recognizes all
the lovable and trustable. The clear, golden eyes looked right into his
for a moment. A strange reverence awoke within him. He had seen more
beautiful eyes before, but none so entirely wanting in that unreality of
expression arising from a wish to produce an effect, none so beautifully
sincere.

"The country stillness, you mean?" he replied.

"Yes; it is rest in itself. I have never stayed in the country before."

"Is it possible!" he exclaimed.

He had often languidly discussed the comparative advantages of Murren
and Zermatt with girls who took a yearly tour abroad as naturally as
their dinner, but to talk to one who had spent her whole life in towns,
who could enjoy a country evening so absolutely and unaffectedly, was a
strange and delightful novelty.

"You are one of those who can really enjoy," he said. "You are not
blasee you are one of the happy mortals who keep the faculty of
enjoyment as strongly all through life as in childhood."

"Yes, I think I can enjoy," said Erica. "But I suppose we pay for our
extra faculty of enjoyment.

"You mean by being more sensitive to pain?"

"Yes, though that sounds rather like Dickens's Mrs. Gummidge, when she
thought she felt smoky chimneys more than other people."

He laughed.

"How I wish you could turn over your work to me, and go to Switzerland
tomorrow in my place! Only I should wish to be there, too, for the sake
of seeing you enjoy it."

"Do you go tomorrow?"

"Yes, with my father."

"Ah! How delightful! I confess I do envy you a little. I do long to see
snow mountains. Always living in London makes me--"

He interrupted her with a sort of exclamation of horror.

"Oh! Don't abuse London!" she said, laughing. "If one must live all the
year round in one place, I would rather be there than anywhere. When I
hear people abusing it, I always think they don't know how to use
their eyes. What can be more lovely, for instance, than the view from
Greenwich Park by the observatory? Don't you know that beautiful clump
of Scotch firs in the foreground, and then the glimpse of the river
through the trees? And then there is that lovely part by Queen
Elizabeth's oak. The view in Hyde Park, too, over the Serpentine, how
exquisite that is on a summer afternoon, with the Westminster towers
standing up in a golden haze. Or Kensington Gardens in t