They sat for a while in silence, and Mrs. Ross seemed to Michael to be waiting for him to speak first, as if by her own attitude of mute expectation she could lure him on to express himself more openly than by direct question and shy answer. He felt the air pregnant with confidences, and kept urging himself on to begin the statement and revelation of his character, sure that whatever he desired to ask must be asked now while he was perhaps for the last time liable to this grave woman’s influence, conscious of the security of goodness, envious of the maternity of peace. This grey-eyed woman seemed to sit above him like a proud eagle, careless of homage, never to be caught, never to be tamed, a figure for worship and inspiration. Michael wondered why all the women who awed him had grey eyes. Blue eyes fired his senses, striking sparks and kindling answering flames from his own blue eyes. Brown eyes left him indifferent. But grey eyes absorbed his very being, whether they were lustrous and violet-shaded like his mother’s and Stella’s, or whether, like Mrs. Ross’s, they were soft as grey sea-water that in a moment could change to the iron-bound rocks they were so near. Still Michael did not speak, but watched Mrs. Ross solemnly hand back to the rosy child sitting beside her in the grass the fallen apples that he would always fling from him exuberantly, panting the while at laughter’s highest pitch. “I wonder if I ever laughed like that,” said Michael. “You were a very serious little boy, when I first knew you,” Mrs. Ross told him. “I must have been rather depressing,” Michael sighed. “No, indeed you were not, dear Michael,” she answered. “You had much too much personality.” “Have I now?” Michael asked sharply. “Yes, of course you have.” “Well, what gives it to me?” “Surely personality is something that is born with one. Personality can’t be made,” said Mrs. Ross. “You don’t think experience has got anything to do with it?” Michael pressed. “I think experience makes the setting, and according to the experience the personality is perfected or debased, but nothing can destroy personality, not even death,” she murmured, far away for a moment from this orchard. “Which would you say had the stronger personality—Alan or I?” asked Michael. “I should say you had,” said Mrs. Ross. “Or at any rate you have a personality that will affect a larger number of people, either favourably or unfavourably.” “But Alan influences me more than I influence him,” Michael argued.