Will listened, and ruminated. Rue’s words had more effect on him by far than Florian’s. For one thing, she was a woman, and she treated the matter earnestly, where Florian only treated it with the condescending flippancy of his native clubland. To Rue, in her true womanliness, an alp-girl’s heart was still a sacred object; to Florian, ’twas a toy for the superior creature, man, as he said, “to play skittles with.” But then, again, Florian had dwelt much to him on the chance of his finally marrying Linnet. To Will himself, that contingency seemed too remote to contemplate. As he sat by Rue’s side on the grassy upland, and heard Rue speak so gently to him in her well-turned sentences, the distance between a refined and educated lady like that and a musical alp-girl appeared to his mind too profound to be bridged over. Was it likely, in a world which held such women as Rue, he ever could marry such a girl as Linnet? Now, Rue herself never spoke of marriage between Linnet and himself as even possible. She took it for granted the end must be either Linnet’s ruin or Linnet’s desertion. And all she urged him was not to break the poor child’s heart for her. So, where Florian’s worldly wisdom fell somewhat flat on his ears, Rue’s feminine sympathy and tact produced a deep effect upon him. “It’ll make her very sad, I’m afraid, if she doesn’t see me again,” he said, looking down, with masculine shyness. “I know it will,” Rue answered, pushing her point with advantage. “I could see that last night. But all the more reason, then, you shouldn’t let it go any further.” “Well, but must I _never_ see her again?” Will inquired with an anxious air. For his own sake, even, that counsel of perfection was a very hard saying. Rue’s face grew still graver. “No; I think you must _never_ see her again,” she answered, seriously. “Remember what it involves. Remember what she is; how dazzled she must be by a gentleman’s advances. The more you see of her, the more she’ll think of it—the more she’ll love you, confide in you, lean on you. That’s only womanly. We all of us do it . . . with a man we admire and feel greater and better than us. And you and she, after all, are both of you human. Some day, perhaps, carried away by a moment of emotion—” She broke off quite suddenly, and let her silence say the rest. “And then,” she went on, after a long pause, “when all’s lost and all’s done, you’ll be sorry, poor child, you’ve spoilt and wrecked her whole life for her. . . .” She paused again, and grew crimson. “Mr Deverill—Will—” she said, faltering, “I wouldn’t speak to you like this if I didn’t feel I was doing it to save this poor child in the end from untold misery. It’s not only the material consequences I’m thinking of now (though those are bad enough), but the girl’s own heart—for I can see she has got one. If you don’t go away, sooner or later you’ll break it. What other end can there be to an affair like this between a poet like you and a Tyrolese peasant girl?”