‘You must be wrong in one respect,’ she returned, watching a large butterfly.  ‘You could not have been brainless.’

’Oh, the foundation of tolerable wits was there, no doubt; but it is just that undeveloped state that irritates me.  Suppose I were now ten years old, and that glorious butterfly before me; should I not leap at it and stick a pin through it—­young savage?  Precisely what a Hottentot boy would do, except that he would be free from the apish folly of pretending a scientific interest, not really existing.  I rejoice to have lived out of my boyhood; I would not go through it again for anything short of a thousand years of subsequent maturity.’

She just glanced at him, a light of laughter in her eyes.  She was abandoning herself to the pleasure of hearing him speak.

‘That picture of my mother,’ he pursued, dropping his voice again, ’does not do her justice.  Even at twelve years old—­(she died when I was twelve)—­I could not help seeing and knowing how beautiful she was.  I have thought of her of late more than I ever did; sometimes I suffer a passion of grief that one so beautiful and lovable has gone and left a mere dumb picture.  I suppose even my memory of her will grow fainter and fainter, founded as it is on imperfect understanding, dim appreciation.  She used to read Italian to me—­first the Italian, then the English—­ and I thought it, as often as not, a bore to have to listen to her!  Thank Heaven, I have the book she used, and can now go over the pieces, and try to recall her voice.’

The butterfly was gone, but the bee still hummed about them.  The hot afternoon air was unstirred by any breeze.

‘How glad I am,’ Wilfrid exclaimed when he had brooded for a few moments, ’that I happened to see you as I rode past!  I should have wandered restlessly about the house in vain, seeking for some one to talk to.  And you listen so patiently.  It is pleasant to be here and talk so freely of things I have always had to keep in my own mind.  Look, do look at that bastion of cloud over the sycamore!  What glorious gradation of tints!  What a snowy crown!’

‘That is a pretty spray,’ he added, holding to her one that he had plucked.

She looked at it; then, as he still held It out, took it from him.  The exquisite fingers touched his own redder and coarser ones.

‘Have you friends in Dunfield?’ he asked.

‘Friends?’

‘Any real friend, I mean—­any girl who gives you real companionship?’

‘Scarcely that.’

’How shall you spend your time when you are not deep in electrics?  What do you mean to read these holidays?’

‘Chiefly German, I think.  I have only just begun to read it.’

’And I can’t read it at all.  Now and then I make a shot at the meaning of a note in a German edition of some classical author, every time fretting at my ignorance.  But there is so endlessly much to do, and a day is so short.’