"No, no," said Imogene. "It's time we were walking back. Don't you like Scott!" she added. "I should think you would if you like those romantic things. I used to like Scott so _much_. When I was fifteen I wouldn't read anything but Scott. Don't you like Thackeray? Oh, he's so _cynical_! It's perfectly delightful." "Cynical?" repeated Colville thoughtfully. "I was looking into _The Newcomes_ the other day, and I thought he was rather sentimental." "Sentimental! Why, what an idea! That is the strangest thing I ever heard of. Oh!" she broke in upon her own amazement, "don't you think Browning's 'Statue and the Bust' is splendid? Mr. Morton read it to us--to Mrs. Bowen, I mean." Colville resented this freedom of Mr. Morton's, he did not know just why; then his pique was lost in sarcastic recollection of the time when he too used to read poems to ladies. He had read that poem to Lina Ridgely and the other one. "Mrs. Bowen asked him to read it," Imogene continued. "Did she?" asked Colville pensively. "And then we discussed it afterward. We had a long discussion. And then he read us the 'Legend of Pornic,' and we had a discussion about that. Mrs. Bowen says it was real gold they found in the coffin; but I think it was the girl's 'gold hair.' I don't know which Mr. Morton thought. Which do you? Don't you think the 'Legend of Pornic' is splendid?" "Yes, it's a great poem, and deep," said Colville. They had come to a place where the bank sloped invitingly to the river. "Miss Effie," he asked, "wouldn't you like to go down and throw stones into the Arno? That's what a river is for," he added, as the child glanced toward Imogene for authorisation, "to have stones thrown into it." "Oh, let us!" cried Imogene, rushing down to the brink. "I don't want to throw stones into it, but to get near it--to get near to any bit of nature. They do pen you up so from it in Europe!" She stood and watched Colville skim stones over the current. "When you stand by the shore of a swift river like this, or near a railroad train when it comes whirling by, don't you ever have a morbid impulse to fling yourself forward?" "Not at my time of life," said Colville, stooping to select a flat stone. "Morbid impulses are one of the luxuries of youth." He threw the stone, which skipped triumphantly far out into the stream. "That was beautiful, wasn't it, Miss Effie?" "Lovely!" murmured the child. He offered her a flat pebble. "Would you like to try one?" "It would spoil my gloves," she said, in deprecating refusal. "Let _me_ try it!" cried Imogene. "I'm not afraid of my gloves." Colville yielded the pebble, looking at her with the thought of how intoxicating he should once have found this bit of wilful _abandon_, but feeling rather sorry for it now. "Oh, perhaps not?" he said, laying his hand upon hers, and looking into her eyes.