“Oh, you strong, silent men! Don’t you know you are called a strong, silent man? I remember how you used to talk to Katya and me about all the others before you got engaged to Katya. When I come to think of it, the others were all little doll-things like Pauline Leicester. Katya used to say: ‘There’s nothing _in_ them!’ She used to say it in private to me. It tore her heart to shreds, you know. I couldn’t understand how you came to turn from them to her, but I know you did and I know you do....” “You haven’t changed a bit, Toto,” she began again. “You play at being serious and reserved and mysterious and full of knowledge, but you’re still the kiddie in knickerbockers who used to have his pockets full of chocolate creams for the gardener’s mite of a daughter. I remember I used to see you watching her skip. You’d stand for minutes at a time and just devour her with your eyes--a little tot of a thing. And then you’d throw her the chocolate creams out of the window. You were twelve and I was nine and Katya was seven and the gardener’s daughter was six, but what an odd boy I used to think you!” “That’s precisely it,” Grimshaw said. “That’s what I want in Pauline. I don’t want to touch her. I want to watch her going through the lancers with that little mouth just open, and the little hand just holding out her skirt, and a little, tender expression of joy. Don’t you see--just to watch her? She’s a small, light bird. I want to have her in a cage, to chirrup over her, to whistle to her, to give her grapes, and to have her peep up at me and worship me. No, I haven’t changed. When I was that boy it didn’t occur to me that I could have Katya; we were like brother and sister, so I wanted to watch little Millie Neil. Now I know I might have Katya and I can’t, so I want to watch Pauline Leicester. I want to; I want to; I want to.” His tones were perfectly level and tranquil; he used no gesture; his eyes remained upon the sand of the rolled side-walk, but his absolutely monotonous voice expressed a longing so deep, and so deep a hunger that Ellida Langham said: “Oh, come, cheer up, old Toto; you’ll be able to watch her as much as you want. I suppose you will dine with the Leicesters the three times a week that you don’t dine with us, and have tea with Pauline every day, won’t you?” “But they’re going out of England for a month,” Grimshaw said, “and I’m due to start for Athens the day before they come back.” “Oh, poor boy!” Ellida commiserated him. “You won’t be able to watch your bird in Leicester’s cage for a whole ten weeks. I believe you’d like to cry over her.” “I should like to cry over her,” Robert Grimshaw said, with perfect gravity. “I should like to kneel down and put my face in her lap and cry, and cry, and cry.” “As you used to do with me years ago,” she said. “As I used to do with you,” he answered.