'Really,' said my uncle, staring round at me. 'Really. That is indeed surprising.' And after a pause he added, 'Surprising and gratifying.' 'Why gratifying, Uncle Rudolph?' I inquired. 'When did she lose her husband?' he asked, taking no notice of my inquiry. The preliminary to an accurate answer to this question was, of course, Which? But again a vision of Mrs. Barnes's imploring face rose before me, and accordingly, restricting myself to Juchs, I said she had lost him shortly before the war. 'Ah. So he was prevented, poor fellow, from having the honour of dying for England.' 'Yes, Uncle Rudolph.' 'Poor fellow. Poor fellow.' 'Yes.' 'Poor fellow. Well, he was spared knowing what he had missed. At least he was spared that. And she--his poor wife--how did she take it?' 'Well, I think.' 'Yes. I can believe it. She wouldn't--I am very sure she wouldn't--intrude her sorrows selfishly on others.' It was at this point that I became aware my uncle had fallen in love. Up to this, oddly enough, it hadn't dawned on me. Now it did more than dawned, it blazed. I looked at him with a new and startled interest. 'Uncle Rudolph,' I said impetuously, no longer a distrustful niece talking to an uncle she suspects, but an equal with an equal, a human being with another human being, 'haven't you ever thought of marrying again? It's quite a long time now since Aunt Winifred--' 'Thought?' said my uncle, his voice sounding for the first time simply, ordinarily human, without a trace in it of the fatal pulpit flavour, 'Thought? I'm always thinking of it.' And except for his apron and gaiters he might have been any ordinary solitary little man eating out his heart for a mate. 'But then why don't you? Surely a deanery of all places wants a wife in it?' 'Of course it does Those strings or rooms--empty, echoing. It shouts for a wife. Shouts, I tell you. At least mine does. But I've never found--I hadn't seen--' He broke off, biting at the stalk of grass. 'But I remember you,' I went on eagerly, 'always surrounded by flocks of devoted women. Weren't any of them--?' 'No,' said my uncle shortly. And after a second of silence he said again, and so loud that I jumped, 'No!' And then he went on even more violently, 'They didn't give me a chance. They never let me alone a minute. After Winifred's death they were like flies. Stuck to me--made me sick--great flies crawling--' And he shuddered, and shook himself as though he were shaking off the lot of them. I looked at him in amazement. 'Why,' I cried, 'you're talking exactly like a man!' But he, staring at the view without seeing an inch of it, took no heed of me, and I heard him say under his breath as though I hadn't been there at all, 'My God, I'm so lonely at night!'