“That’s very pretty, Richard, but it doesn’t mean much; don’t you ever want to be out, moving, riding, anything! anything but sit cooped indoors day after day with books?” “I confess I haven’t much desire to be riding into snow-drifts on this particular morning,” said Calladine, glancing at the white-and-leaden prospect out of the window. “And you wouldn’t allow me to do so either, if I had a mind to?” “Such a wild child!” said Calladine fondly, stroking her hair. “How fortunate that you should have a staid, elderly husband to look after you.” “How do you think I looked after myself for nineteen years, then, Richard?” “Heaven knows,” said Calladine in mock dismay; banter with Clare was a form of conversation he particularly enjoyed. The morning promised to pass agreeably; there was nothing he liked better than for Clare to kneel at his feet, as she was doing now, sitting back on her heels, while he looked at her fresh youthfulness with that fond and tender glance of his, and rallied her gently, or caressed her with the courtly phrases she had heard from him alone among men. “How _did_ you look after yourself?” he repeated. “You always escaped from old Martha Sparrow, and even the poacher cannot always have been at hand for a ready rescue, and in any case he is scarcely my idea of a knight-errant.” “No,” said Clare, “he hasn’t such pretty manners as you, Richard.” “Now you’re laughing at me,--are you, or aren’t you? I never know,” and he caught her to him and began flecking her face and hair with quick kisses, but desisted to say more seriously, “You’re so exquisitely a woman, Clare, so deliciously a child; I realised that you were both from the day you first came to visit me here.” The phrase had a vague echo of familiarity for Clare; “so exquisitely a woman”; she felt sure that she had heard him say that, or something very like it, before; and she thought with the hardness that was becoming habitual to her where he was concerned, that from no woman would he demand anything further. “What a toy I am to you, Richard,” she said idly; “what a toy you like to make of me.” “The most exquisite toy that ever came into the life of a sad and lonely man,” he said, with a return to his old manner, and he took her hand and began to play with the bangle on her wrist. He handled her much as he would handle his terra-cotta statuettes, and for a while she endured it, but presently sprang away and went to stand at the window where she might look out upon the prospect of shining snow. “Always looking out, Clare? what liberty do you see out there? you think I ought to let you go, little caged bird, but you would soon perish,--your pretty limbs wouldn’t stand the cold,--better stay happily where you are, believe me,--don’t fret,--come back to me,--let me whisper how precious you are,--come back to our lovely idleness.”