Followed this waylaying! Its resolute character makes me think it was

the chin's doing; that "common mortal" touch which stands in such good

stead to some women. Because men, I mean really masculine men, those

whose generations have evolved an ideal woman, are often very timid. Who

wouldn't be before the ideal? It's your sentimental trifler, who has

just missed being nothing at all, who is enterprising, simply because it

is easy to appear enterprising when one does not mean to put one's belief

to the test.

Well, whatever it was that encouraged him, Captain Anthony stuck to Flora

de Barral in a manner which in a timid man might have been called heroic

if it had not been so simple. Whether policy, diplomacy, simplicity, or

just inspiration, he kept up his talk, rather deliberate, with very few

pauses. Then suddenly as if recollecting himself:

"It's funny. I don't think you are annoyed with me for giving you my

company unasked. But why don't you say something?"

I asked Miss de Barral what answer she made to this query.

"I made no answer," she said in that even, unemotional low voice which

seemed to be her voice for delicate confidences. "I walked on. He did

not seem to mind. We came to the foot of the quarry where the road winds

up hill, past the place where you were sitting by the roadside that day.

I began to wonder what I should do. After we reached the top Captain

Anthony said that he had not been for a walk with a lady for years and

years--almost since he was a boy. We had then come to where I ought to

have turned off and struck across a field. I thought of making a run of

it. But he would have caught me up. I knew he would; and, of course, he

would not have allowed me. I couldn't give him the slip."

"Why didn't you ask him to leave you?" I inquired curiously.

"He would not have taken any notice," she went on steadily. "And what

could I have done then? I could not have started quarrelling with

him--could I? I hadn't enough energy to get angry. I felt very tired

suddenly. I just stumbled on straight along the road. Captain Anthony

told me that the family--some relations of his mother--he used to know in

Liverpool was broken up now, and he had never made any friends since. All

gone their different ways. All the girls married. Nice girls they were

and very friendly to him when he was but little more than a boy. He

repeated: 'Very nice, cheery, clever girls.' I sat down on a bank

against a hedge and began to cry."




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