them was impossible owing to the haze of
wonder in which they were enveloped. She could not reason about them as
about people whose feelings went by the same rule as her own did, and
her mind dwelt on them with a kind of physical pleasure such as is
caused by the contemplation of bright things hanging in the sun. From
them all life seemed to radiate; the very words of books were steeped
in radiance. She then became haunted by a suspicion which she was so
reluctant to face that she welcomed a trip and stumble over the grass
because thus her attention was dispersed, but in a second it had
collected itself again. Unconsciously she had been walking faster and
faster, her body trying to outrun her mind; but she was now on the
summit of a little hillock of earth which rose above the river and
displayed the valley. She was no longer able to juggle with several
ideas, but must deal with the most persistent, and a kind of melancholy
replaced her excitement. She sank down on to the earth clasping her
knees together, and looking blankly in front of her. For some time she
observed a great yellow butterfly, which was opening and closing its
wings very slowly on a little flat stone.

"What is it to be in love?" she demanded, after a long silence; each
word as it came into being seemed to shove itself out into an unknown
sea. Hypnotised by the wings of the butterfly, and awed by the discovery
of a terrible possibility in life, she sat for some time longer. When
the butterfly flew away, she rose, and with her two books beneath her
arm returned home again, much as a soldier prepared for battle.

Chapter XIV

The sun of that same day going down, dusk was saluted as usual at the
hotel by an instantaneous sparkle of electric lights. The hours between
dinner and bedtime were always difficult enough to kill, and the night
after the dance they were further tarnished by the peevishness of
dissipation. Certainly, in the opinion of Hirst and Hewet, who lay back
in long arm-chairs in the middle of the hall, with their coffee-cups
beside them, and their cigarettes in their hands, the evening was
unusually dull, the women unusually badly dressed, the men unusually
fatuous. Moreover, when the mail had been distributed half an hour ago
there were no letters for either of the two young men. As every other
person, practically, had received two or three plump letters from
England, which they were now engaged in reading, this seemed hard, an