She broke off suddenly, and looking up, let her eye rest for a second on the dark thread of clambering pines that crest the down just above Brockham.  “This is dreadfully egotistical,” she cried, with a sharp little start.  “I ought to apologize for talking so much to you about my own feelings.”

Alan gazed at her and smiled.  “Why apologize,” he asked, “for managing to be interesting?  You, are not egotistical at all.  What you are telling me is history,—­the history of a soul, which is always the one thing on earth worth hearing.  I take it as a compliment that you should hold me worthy to hear it.  It is a proof of confidence.  Besides,” he went on, after a second’s pause, “I am a man; you are a woman.  Under those circumstances, what would otherwise be egotism becomes common and mutual.  When two people sympathize with one another, all they can say about themselves loses its personal tinge and merges into pure human and abstract interest.”

Herminia brought back her eyes from infinity to his face.  “That’s true,” she said frankly.  “The magic link of sex that severs and unites us makes all the difference.  And, indeed, I confess I wouldn’t so have spoken of my inmost feelings to another woman.”

III.

From that day forth, Alan and Herminia met frequently.  Alan was given to sketching, and he sketched a great deal in his idle times on the common.  He translated the cottages from real estate into poetry.  On such occasions, Herminia’s walks often led her in the same direction.  For Herminia was frank; she liked the young man, and, the truth having made her free, she knew no reason why she should avoid or pretend to avoid his company.  She had no fear of that sordid impersonal goddess who rules Philistia; it mattered not to her what “people said,” or whether or not they said anything about her.  “Aiunt:  quid aiunt? aiant,” was her motto.  Could she have known to a certainty that her meetings on the common with Alan Merrick had excited unfavorable comment among the old ladies of Holmwood, the point would have seemed to her unworthy of an emancipated soul’s consideration.  She could estimate at its true worth the value of all human criticism upon human action.

So, day after day, she met Alan Merrick, half by accident, half by design, on the slopes of the Holmwood.  They talked much together, for Alan liked her and understood her.  His heart went out to her.  Compact of like clay, he knew the meaning of her hopes and aspirations.  Often as he sketched he would look up and wait, expecting to catch the faint sound of her light step, or see her lithe figure poised breezy against the sky on the neighboring ridges.  Whenever she drew near, his pulse thrilled at her coming,—­ a somewhat unusual experience with Alan Merrick.  For Alan, though a pure soul in his way, and mixed of the finer paste, was not quite like those best of men, who are, so to speak, born