“I’ll take the liberty of calling you by some exceedingly unChristian name,” he menaced, “if you don’t leave off talking that impossible rot about my making you a present.” “I wasn’t talking impossible rot about your making me a present,” she contradicted. “I was merely telling you how dépaysée I’d felt. The rest was parenthetic. So now, then, keep your promise, call me Johannah.” “Johannah,” he called, submissively. “Will,” said she. “And when you feel, Will, that on the whole, Will, you’ve had strawberries enough, Will, quite to destroy your appetite, perhaps it would be as well if we should go in to breakfast, Willie.” IV. They were seated on the turf, under a great tree, in the park, amid a multitude of bright-coloured cushions, Johannah, Will, and Madame Dornaye. It was three weeks later—whence it may be inferred that he had abandoned his resolution to “go back to town to-morrow.” He was smoking a cigarette; Madame Dornaye was knitting; Johannah, hatless, in an indescribable confection of cream-coloured muslin, her head pillowed in a scarlet cushion against the body of the tree, was gazing off towards the sea with dreamy eyes. “Will,” she called languidly, by-and-by. “Yes?” he responded. “Do you happen by any chance to belong to that sect of philosophers who regard gold as a precious metal?” “From the little I’ve seen of it, I am inclined to regard it as precious—yes,” he answered. “Well, then, I wouldn’t be so lavish of it, if I were you,” said she. “If you don’t take care,” said he, “you’ll force me to admit that I haven’t an idea of what you’re driving at.” “I’m driving at your silence. You’re as silent as a statue. Please talk a little.” “What shall I talk about?” “Anything. Nothing. Tell us a story,” she decided. “I don’t know any stories.” “Then the least you can do is to invent one,” was her plausible retort. “What sort of a story would you like?” “There’s only one sort of story a woman ever sincerely likes—especially on a hot summer’s afternoon, in the country,” she affirmed. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly invent a love-story,” he disclaimed. “Then tell us a true one. You needn’t be afraid of shocking Madame Dornaye. She’s a realist herself.” “Jeanne ma fille!” murmured Madame Dornaye, reprovingly. “The only true love-story I could tell has a somewhat singular defect,” said he. “There’s no heroine.” “That’s like the story of what’s-his-name—Narcissus,” Johannah said. “With the vastest difference. The hero of my story wasn’t in love with his own image. He was in love with a beautiful princess,” Will explained. “Then how can you have the face to say that there’s no heroine?” she demanded. “There isn’t any heroine. At the same time, there’s nothing else. The story’s all about her. You see, she never existed.” “You said it was a true love-story,” she reproached him. “So it is—literally true.” “I asked for a story, and you give me a riddle.” She shook her head.