“Consciously?  You may just as well ask my shadow that lay so still by me on the young grass in that morning sunshine.  I never knew before how still I could keep.  It wasn’t the stillness of terror.  I remained, knowing perfectly well that if I ran he was not the man to run after me.  I remember perfectly his deep-toned, politely indifferent ‘Restez donc.’  He was mistaken.  Already then I hadn’t the slightest intention to move.  And if you ask me again how far conscious all this was the nearest answer I can make you is this:  that I remained on purpose, but I didn’t know for what purpose I remained.  Really, that couldn’t be expected. . . .  Why do you sigh like this?  Would you have preferred me to be idiotically innocent or abominably wise?”

“These are not the questions that trouble me,” I said.  “If I sighed it is because I am weary.”

“And getting stiff, too, I should say, in this Pompeiian armchair.  You had better get out of it and sit on this couch as you always used to do.  That, at any rate, is not Pompeiian.  You have been growing of late extremely formal, I don’t know why.  If it is a pose then for goodness’ sake drop it.  Are you going to model yourself on Captain Blunt?  You couldn’t, you know.  You are too young.”

“I don’t want to model myself on anybody,” I said.  “And anyway Blunt is too romantic; and, moreover, he has been and is yet in love with you—­a thing that requires some style, an attitude, something of which I am altogether incapable.”

“You know it isn’t so stupid, this what you have just said.  Yes, there is something in this.”

“I am not stupid,” I protested, without much heat.

“Oh, yes, you are.  You don’t know the world enough to judge.  You don’t know how wise men can be.  Owls are nothing to them.  Why do you try to look like an owl?  There are thousands and thousands of them waiting for me outside the door:  the staring, hissing beasts.  You don’t know what a relief of mental ease and intimacy you have been to me in the frankness of gestures and speeches and thoughts, sane or insane, that we have been throwing at each other.  I have known nothing of this in my life but with you.  There had always been some fear, some constraint, lurking in the background behind everybody, everybody—­except you, my friend.”

“An unmannerly, Arcadian state of affairs.  I am glad you like it.  Perhaps it’s because you were intelligent enough to perceive that I was not in love with you in any sort of style.”

“No, you were always your own self, unwise and reckless and with something in it kindred to mine, if I may say so without offence.”

“You may say anything without offence.  But has it never occurred to your sagacity that I just, simply, loved you?”

“Just—­simply,” she repeated in a wistful tone.

“You didn’t want to trouble your head about it, is that it?”

“My poor head.  From your tone one might think you yearned to cut it off.  No, my dear, I have made up my mind not to lose my head.”