“Well?” she said, when she had taken up this discreet position.  But as he did not seem ready she went on, “I really don’t think there is anything to say; I did wrong yesterday, not quite as much wrong as your mother and Denah think, still wrong—­what my own people would have disapproved, at least if it were found out; that’s the biggest crime on their list—­and what I knew your people would condemn utterly.  I am afraid I have no excuse to offer; I knew what I was doing, and I did it with my eyes open.  I did not see any harm in it myself but I knew other people would, so I meant to say nothing.  I had deceived your parents before, and I meant to keep on doing it.  You know I had walked with that man lots of times before yesterday; all the time your mother thought me so good to visit your cousin I really enjoyed doing it because I walked with him.”

“Do you love him?” The question was asked low and almost jerkily.

“Love him?” Julia said in surprise; “no, of course not.  That is where the difference comes in, I believe; you all seem to think there is nothing but love and love-making and kissing and cuddling.  I have just liked talking to him and I suppose he liked talking to me, as you might some friend, or Denah some girl she knew.  We never thought about love and all that; we couldn’t, you know; he belongs to a different lot from what I do.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” he answered, and there was a vibrant note in his voice which was new to her.  “I understand that it is you who are right and we who are wrong—­you who know good and evil and can choose, we who suspect and think and hint, believing ill when there is none.  Rather than send you away, we should ask your forgiveness!”

“You should do nothing of the kind,” Julia said decidedly, beginning to take alarm.  “I may not have been wrong in quite the way your parents think, but I was wrong all the same.  I am not good, believe me; I am not as you are.  Look at me, I am bad inwardly, and really I am what you would condemn and despise.”

She was standing in the afternoon sunlight, dark, slim, alert, intensely alive, full of a twisty varied knowledge, a creature of another world.  She felt that he must know and recognise the gulf between if only he would look fairly at her.

He did look fairly, but he recognised only what was in his own mind.

“You are to me a beacon—­” he began.

But she, realising at last that Denah’s jealousy was not after all without foundations, cut him short.

“I am not a beacon,” she said, “before you take me for a guiding light you had better hear something about me.  Do you know why I came here?  I will tell you—­it was to get your blue daffodil!”

He stared at her speechless, and she found it bad to see the surprise and almost uncomprehending pain which came into his face, as into the face of a child unjustly smitten.  But she went on resolutely:  “I heard of it in England, that it was worth a lot of money—­and I wanted money—­so I came here; I meant to get a bulb and sell it.”