"I suppose I was rather rude," answered Vane reflectively. "Though, if it's any comfort to you to know, I was much ruder to two men going up in the train a few days later. . . ." "It isn't of the slightest interest to me," she returned, "whom you're rude to, or how you spend your spare time. The habits of an ill-mannered boor are not of great importance, are they?" She turned her back on him, and parted the undergrowth with her hands, preparatory to leaving. "Don't go." His voice close behind her made her pause. "I need you--officially." She looked round at him, and despite herself the corners of her lips began to twitch. "You really are the most impossible person," she remarked. "What do you need me for?" He stepped back to his usual seat, and pointed to a small mossy bank beside him. "Come and sit down there, and let's think. . . ." After a moment's hesitation she did as he said. "It's rather a knotty problem, isn't it?" he continued after a moment. "I might want you to flirt with me in order to avert my suicide in the pond through boredom. . . ." "You may want," she retorted. "But it's in the official programme?" "You're not on the official list," she flashed back. "Worse and worse," he murmured. "I begin to despair. However, I won't try you as highly as that. I will just ask you a plain, honest question. And I rely on you to answer me truthfully. . . . Do you think I should be a more attractive being; do you think I should be more capable of grappling with those great problems which--ah--surround us on all sides, if I could dissect rats--or even mice?" he added thoughtfully after a pause. The girl looked at him in amazement. "Are you trying to be funny?" she asked at length. "Heaven forbid!" he said fervently. "I was never more serious in my life. But, in that book,"--he pointed to one lying between them--"everybody, who is anybody dissects rodents." She picked up the book and gazed at the title. "But this is the book everybody's talking about," she said. "I am nothing if not fashionable," returned Vane. "And do they dissect rats in it?" "Don't misunderstand me, and take too gloomy a view of the situation," said Vane reassuringly. "They do other things besides. . . . Brilliant things, all most brilliantly written about; clever things, all most cleverly told. But whenever there's a sort of gap to be filled up, a _mauvais quart d'heure_ after luncheon, the hero runs off and deals with a mouse. And even if he doesn't, you know he could. . . . And the heroine! It's a fundamental part of all their educations, their extraordinary brilliance seems to rest on it as a foundation." She looked at him curiously. "I'm not particularly dense," she said after a while, "but I must admit you rather defeat me."