Judy was no longer looking tired.  Joe had met her perfectly, holding her away and looking into her eyes in the whimsical tender way he had as though he were saying:  “It’s absurd, isn’t it, to make out what we did together is of any importance, and yet as long as we’re human beings we can’t help feeling it’s wonderful ...” and he had thanked her, hardly in words, for the hours of the night before, though there had been words too, as she had buried her head against him.  With that and her usual careful aids to beauty Judy was glowing, and though there was never a shade of possessiveness in her manner towards Killigrew, yet this morning there was so much of confidence and possession of herself that it almost amounted to the same thing when she made her appearance by his side.

Georgie declared a rest when the two of them appeared, and Ishmael also came to look at what she had been doing.  He was standing a little behind her and looking down, not so much at the painting as at the back of her bent neck, where the absurd little drake’s tails curved against the skin, so white in the sunshine.  One ear was rosy where the light shone through it, and behind it lay a soft blue crescent of shadow.

As he looked that odd something occurred to Ishmael which suddenly puts a person in a new light—­the slipping of the plane, the freakish turn of the kaleidoscope which makes the new light strike at a fresh angle something seen before and makes it different.  He fell in love with Georgie in that moment, staring at her bent neck and the curve of her ear.

All day a delightful exaltation possessed him; he was not yet at the stage when a man is plagued with doubts of success or advisability; he was only tingling with a new delight.  He helped her along any rough place when they all walked over to the Vicarage to tea with a joy he had not felt the day before, and he did not even know how irrational it all was.

At tea the conversation turned on different types of men, and Killigrew held forth on what he held to be the only true and vital classification.

“The only division in mankind is the same as the only division in the animal world, of course,” he said.

“What is that?” asked the Parson.  “Wild and tame?”

“No; it is the division between the animal who goes with the pack and him who hunts a solitary trail.  The bee is kin to the wolf because both are subject to a community-life with strict laws.  The bee is nearer of kin to the wolf than it is to the butterfly, which lives to itself alone.  The fox, who hunts and is harried as a solitary, is further removed from his brother the wolf than he is from the wild cat, who has like habits to himself.  My natural history may be wrong, but you see the theory!”

“And you carry that into the world of man?” said Judith lightly.  In her heart was a sick pain and anger, and the brightness of the day had fled for her; with his few careless words Killigrew had re-created all the old atmosphere of depression, of—­“It’s no good, I know he’s as he is, and that nothing I can do or that happens to me will ever make him any different....”