“You are a very foolish person,” she answered.  “She came here simply because she was weary of cities and wanted to get as far away from them as possible.  Only last night she said that she would be content never to breathe the air of a town again.”

Lindsay tossed his cigarette away impatiently.

“Oh, I know exactly her way of saying that sort of thing!” he exclaimed.  “A moment later she would be describing very cleverly, and a little regretfully, some wonderful sight or other only to be found in London.”

“Really,” she declared, “I am getting afraid of you.  You are more observant than I thought.”

“There is one gift, at least,” he answered, “which we country folk are supposed to possess.  We know truth when we see it.  But I am saying more than I have any right to.  I don’t want to make you angry, Clara!”

She shook her head.

“You won’t do that,” she said.  “But I don’t think you quite understand.  Let me tell you something.  You know that I am an orphan, don’t you?  I do not remember my father at all, and I can only just remember my mother.  I was brought up at a pleasant but very dreary boarding-school.  I had very few friends, and no one came to see me except my uncle, who was always very kind, but always in a desperate hurry.  I stayed there until I was seventeen.  Then my uncle came and fetched me, and brought me straight here.  Now that is exactly what my life has been.  What do you think of it?”

“Very dull indeed,” he answered, frankly.

She nodded.

“I have never been in London at all,” she continued.  “I really only know what men and women are like from books, or the one or two types I have met around here.  Now, do you think that that is enough to satisfy one?  Of course it is very beautiful here, I know, and sometimes when the sun is shining and the birds singing and the sea comes up into the creeks, well, one almost feels content.  But the sun doesn’t always shine, Richard, and there are times when I am right down bored, and I feel as though I’d love to draw my allowance from uncle, pack my trunk, and go up to London, on my own!”

He laughed.  Somehow all that she had said had sounded so natural that some part of his uneasiness was already passing away.

“Yours,” he admitted, “is an extreme case.  I really don’t know why your uncle has never taken you up for a month or so in the season.”

“We have lived here for four years,” she said, “and he has never once suggested it.  He goes himself, of course, sometimes, but I am quite sure that he doesn’t enjoy it.  For days before he fidgets about and looks perfectly miserable, and when he comes back he always goes off for a long walk by himself.  I am perfectly certain that for some reason or other he hates going.  Yet he seems to have been everywhere, to know every one.  To hear him talk with Mrs. Handsell is like a new Arabian Nights to me.”

He nodded.