all into one of the well-defined categories.

Much in this world has to be lain at the door of opportunity, and
idleness in youth, and _ennui_ and boredom in middle ages. Rawson-Clew
was in the borderland between the two, and did not consider himself
open to the temptations of either. He was not idle, he had things to
do; and he was not bored, he had things to think about; but not enough
of either to prevent him from having a wide margin.

When he met Julia again there was no reason for dropping the
acquaintance renewed through necessity. But also there was no
opportunity, on that occasion, for pushing it further, even if there
had been inclination, for she was not alone.

It was on Saturday evening; she was walking down the same road, much
about the same time, but there was with her a tall, fair young man,
with a long face and loose limbs. He carried, of course, an
umbrella--that was part of his full dress--and the basket--he walked
between her and the cart track. She bowed sedately to Rawson-Clew, and
the young man, becoming tardily aware of it, took off his hat, rather
late, and with a sweeping foreign flourish. She wore a pair of cotton
gloves, and lifted her dress a few inches, and glanced shyly up at her
escort now and then as he talked. They were speaking Dutch, and she
was behaving Dutch, as plain and demure a person as it was possible to
imagine, until she looked back, then Rawson-Clew saw a very devil of
mockery and mischief flash up in her eyes. Only for a second; the
expression was gone before her head was turned again, and that was
decorously soon. But it had been there; it was like the momentary
parting of the clouds on a grey day; it illumined her whole face--her
mind, too, perhaps--as the eerie, tricky gleam, which is gone before a
man knows it, lights up the level landscape, and transforms it to
something new and strange.

Rawson-Clew walked on ahead of the pair; he had to outpace them, since
he was bound the same way, and could not walk with them. He was not
sure that he was not rather sorry for Denah, the Dutch girl; one who
can laugh at herself as well as another, and all alone, too, is he
thought, rather apt to enjoy the incongruous more than the suitable.

CHAPTER VII

HOW JULIA DID NOT GET THE BLUE DAFFODIL

Vrouw Van Heigen was learning a new crochet pattern; one did it in
thread of a Sevres blue shade; when several long strips were made, one
sewed them together with pieces of bla