“I should not think it was a mistake you were likely to make either,” she observed.

“You think not?  Well, I had no chance this time; the fact has been made pretty obvious to me.”

She did not say she was sorry; in her opinion it was an impertinence to offer condolence to failure.  “I suppose,” she said, after a pause, “there is not a back way—­a door, or window, even, to your object?”

“Unfortunately, no.  There are no windows at the back; and as to the door—­like you, it was that which I tried, with the result that recently—­yesterday, in fact—­I was metaphorically shown out.”

Julia had learnt enough by this time, though she had not been told for certain, that her first suspicions were right; to be sure, it was the explosive which took Rawson-Clew to the little village evening after evening.  She had gathered as much from various things which had been said, though she did not know at all how he was trying to get it, nor in what way he had introduced himself to Herr Van de Greutz.  Whatever method he had tried it was now clear he had failed; no doubt been found out, for the chemist, unlike Joost Van Heigen, was the very reverse of unsuspecting, and thoroughly on the look-out for other nations who wanted to share his discovery.  For a moment Julia wished she had been in Rawson-Clew’s place; of course she, too, might have failed—­probably would; she had no reason to think she would succeed where he could not; but she certainly would not have failed in this for the reason she had failed with the blue daffodil.  The attempt would have been so thoroughly well worth making; there would have been some sport in it, and a foe worthy of her steel.  In spite of her desire for the simple life, she had too much real ability for this sort of intrigue, and too much past practice in subterfuge, not to experience lapses of inclination for it when she saw such work being done, and perhaps not done well.  Of this, however, she naturally did not speak to Rawson-Clew; she rearranged her flowers in silence for a little while, at last she said—­

“It is hateful to fail.”

“It is ignominious, certainly; one does not wish to blazon it from the housetops; still, doubtless like your crochet work, it is good discipline.”

“Maybe,” Julia allowed, but without conviction.  “Yours seems a simple failure, mine is a compound one.  If it is ignominious, as you say, to fail, it would have been equally ignominious in another way if I had succeeded.  I could not have been satisfied either way.”

“That sounds very complicated,” Rawson-Clew said; “but then, I imagine you are a complicated young person.”

“And you are not.”

“Not young, certainly,” he said, lighting another cigarette.

“Nor complicated,” she insisted; “you are built on straight lines; there are given things you can do and can’t do, would do and would not do, and might do in an emergency.  It is a fine kind of person to be, but it is not the kind which surprises itself.”