“N—­no.  I generally try to get a little sport some time during the year.”

“Naturally you know your own intentions best.  I only happen to remember that you said, yesterday morning, you hoped not to leave Rhinefields till the middle of next month.”

“Did I say that?  I must have been dreaming?”

“Very likely you were.  Or perhaps you’re dreaming now.”

“Not at all; in fact, I’m particularly wide awake.  I see things so clearly that I’ve looked in to tell you some of them.  You must get out of this stifling hole and go back to Rhinefields at once.”

“I don’t like that way of speaking of a place I’ve become attached to.  It isn’t a stifling hole; it’s a clean little inn, where the service is the very law of kindness.  The art may be of a period somewhat earlier than the primitive,” she laughed, looking round at the highly colored chromos of lake and mountain scenery hanging on the walls, “and the furniture may not be strictly in the style of Louis Quinze, but the host and hostess treat me as a daughter, and every garcon is my slave.”

“I can quite understand that; but all the same it’s no fit place for you.”

“I suppose the fittest place for any one is the place in which he feels at home.”

“Don’t say that,” he begged, with sudden emotion in his voice.

“I think I ought to say it,” she insisted, “first of all because it’s true; and then because you would feel more at ease about me if you knew just how it’s true.”

“You know that I’m not at ease about you.”

“I know you think I must be discontented with my lot, when—­in a certain sense—­I’m not at all so.  I don’t pretend that I prefer working for a living to having money of my own; but I’ve found this”—­she hesitated, as if thinking out her phrase—­“I’ve found that life grows richer as it goes on, in whatever way one has to live it.  It’s as if the streams that fed it became more numerous the farther one descended from the height.”

“I’m glad you’re able to say that—­”

“I can say it very sincerely; and I lay stress upon it, because I know you’re kind enough to be worried about me.  I wish I could make you understand how little reason there is for it, though you mustn’t think that I’m not touched by it, or that I mistake its motive.  I’ve come to see that what I’ve often heard, and used scarcely to believe, is quite true, that American men have an attitude toward women entirely different from that of our men.  Our men probably think more about women than any other men in the world; but they think of them as objects of prey—­with joys and sorrows not to be taken seriously.  You, on the contrary, are willing to put yourself to great inconvenience for me, merely because I am a woman.”

“Not merely because of that,” Derek permitted himself to say.

“We needn’t weigh motives as if they were golddust.  When we have their general trend we have enough.  I only want you to see that I understand you, while I must ask you not to be hurt if I still persist in not availing myself of your courtesy.  I wish you wouldn’t question me any more about it, because there are situations in which one cheapens things by the very effort to put them into words.  If you were a woman, you’d comprehend my feeling—­”