Ambrose lifted his eyes for a moment from his float to glance at her—a reed-fairy with amber robe and amber hair, steadily holding her rod with slender hands, frowning at the float that bobbed in the ripples. She was a novice at fishing. It was certainly accurate to describe her as a most lovely young woman. The meaning of her words would no doubt be given presently. She had clearly brought him here to deliver it. “They can’t bear it any more because Hsiao’s death doesn’t make any difference to Yuan and Wang. Why, Ambrose?” “You know why. You have grasped the principle. They cherish the personality, and cannot endure the indifference to personality that Yuan and Wang display.” “Yes,” she responded; “I do know. They cannot bear to think that they are of no more importance than a grain of dust, or a slug, or a tomato. What do you think about personality?” “The strange thing about it is,” he pointed out, “that Wang and Yuan, who ignore it, have more of it. It is a strange truth. But we understand—do we not?—that the personality is not their own. They merely contain, as it were, something cosmical, something that streams and emanates from them.” “It has the effect, merely, of personality,” she observed. “But it is very fascinating.” “You find it so?” “My float has gone.” It had disappeared in the clouds that seemed to drift under it. “Don’t strike for a few seconds,” he put in. “It’s pike. They run off with the bait and begin to swallow it afterwards. Now!” She struck. “Don’t pull,” he continued. “Hold gently when you can.” “I feel it,” she gasped. “I’m in communication. It’s wonderful to feel the weight of something in a world you can’t see.” By a method of her own the fish was got into the boat. “It’s a pike,” said Ambrose, “but with improvements of Yuan’s.” “Yes, I find Yuan fascinating,” she continued, when she had cast her line again. “You are in love with him?” “Must you put it in the diary? If he were a figure on a vase ... if he would behave as such after marriage ... I don’t know if I am in love. That’s what I have to find out. I couldn’t go away without finding out, could I? I must find out. Nothing else matters, and that is the sole reason why I am making so much trouble—not intellectual curiosity, or friendship, or anything like that, but simply an unanswerable desire to understand what is happening to me. At present it’s like this—I can’t do without him. I feel I must always be in his presence, watching him, hearing him. Is that love?” “It is foolish,” said Ambrose, “to ask ourselves ‘Is she in love?’ We have no definition of love. We do not know what it is. This is the only question we need put, in the case before us: ‘Is your desire towards him strong enough, and more especially single enough, to decide you to make an experiment with him that would create a situation complex enough to be awkward from the point of view of some of the parties less intimately, but to an important extent, concerned?’”