"Haven't you? Men don't live to be thirty-seven without getting to know women; they can't go about the world without meeting them.... There's a little girl down in Sussex. A dear little girl. She's everything a man wants a woman to be." "Lots of hair?" "Lots of hair. Stacks of it. And she's clever. She can cook and sew and make her own clothes and her sisters'. She's kept her father's house since she was fifteen. Without a servant." "How awful for her. And you like her?" "Yes, Mary." "I'm glad you like her. Who else?" "A Frenchwoman in Paris. And a German woman in Hamburg. And an Englishwoman in London; the cleverest woman I know. She's unhappy, Mary. Her husband behaves to her like a perfect brute." "Poor thing. I hope you're nice to her." "She thinks I am." Silence. He peered into her face. "Are you jealous of her, Mary?" "I'm not jealous of any of them. You can marry them all if you want to." "I was going to marry one of them." "Then why didn't you?" "Because the little girl in Essex wouldn't let me." "Little beast!" "So you're jealous of _her_, are you? You needn't be. She's gone. She tried to swallow the _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_ and it disagreed with her and she died. "'Nur einmal doch mächt' ich dich sehen, Und sinken vor dir auf's Knie, Und sterbend zu dir sprechen, Madam, ich liebe Sie!'" "What's that? Oh, what's that?" "_That_--Madam--is Heine." VIII. "My dearest Maurice--" It was her turn for writing. She wondered whether he would like to hear about the tennis party at the Vicarage. Mr. Spencer Rollitt's nephew, Harry Craven, had been there, and the two Acroyd girls from Renton Lodge, and Norman Waugh. Harry Craven's fawn face with pointed chin; dust-white face with black accents. Small fawn's mouth lifting upwards. Narrow nostrils slanting upwards. Two lobes of white forehead. Half-moons of parted, brushed-back hair. He smiled: a blunt V opening suddenly on white teeth, black eyes fluttering. He laughed: all his features made sudden, upward movements like raised wings. The Acroyds. Plump girls with pink, blown cheeks and sulky mouths. You thought of sullen, milk-fed babies, of trumpeting cherubs disgusted with their trumpets. They were showing their racquets to Harry Craven, bending their heads. You could see the backs of their privet-white necks, fat, with no groove in the nape, where their hair curled in springy wires, Minna's dark, Sophy's golden. They turned their backs when you spoke and pretended not to hear you. She thought she would like Maurice to know that Harry Craven and she had beaten Minna Ackroyd and Norman Waugh. A love set. Afterwards--Harry Craven playing hide-and-seek in the dark. The tennis net, coiled like a grey snake on the black lawn. "Let's hide together." Harry Craven, hiding, crouching beside you under the currant bushes. The scramble together up the water-butt and along the scullery roof. The last rush across the lawn. "I say, you run like the wind."