The emotionless quiet of her tone suggested a noble resignation to the general obstructiveness of life; a resignation that, to the man’s strenuous spirit, seemed alike pathetic and premature. ‘Why, you’re only on the threshold of things,’ he rebuked her gently. ‘What are the talents you’ve dabbled in? Do tell me.’ ‘Oh, I’ve written a little and acted a little. I wanted badly to take that up in earnest. Heavens! Wasn’t there a row! So I fell back on the writing. Verses, chiefly.’ ‘Have they appeared, any of them?’ ‘A few. Here and there. I was vain enough once to have a booklet printed out of my allowance. Then there was a worse row than ever.’ ‘But why?’ ‘Well—they weren’t exactly of the pretty-pretty order. And my father’s a clergyman: that kind of clergyman.’ ‘I see.’ He saw her, in fact, a creature of fine sensibilities, striving for self-expression, thwarted, discouraged, and misprized by those who should have been her natural helpers, and his heart went out to her the more. ‘May I⸺’ he hesitated. ‘Miss Alison, won’t you let me see some of your verses?’ ‘No. Not for the world.’ She flushed suddenly and her voice had a tremor in it. It was the first time he had seen her really perturbed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he began: but she was mistress of herself in a moment and turned the matter off with a laugh. ‘We’re both making mountains out of molehills! The verses were wretched poor stuff, most of them. Father was quite right to condemn them; but he went the wrong way about it. He usually does. They were just the outcome of—an influence: a passing phase. I hated them myself—afterwards. One does go through phases, doesn’t one? At least I do. It’s rather interesting. Saves one from the bottomless pit of boredom, the only thing we’re really afraid of nowadays.’ She made the statement in all seriousness. ‘But—looking back—one sometimes wonders how much that other girl was really me?’ He did not answer at once; partly because he was trying not to be aware that while she spoke there had blown through him a chill breeze of doubt: an unwelcome reminder that after all he knew nothing as yet of her life, her antecedents, or—if it came to that—of herself. He only knew that almost from the first moment of contact she had put a spell upon him that he had neither the power nor the will to resist. ‘Do I seem to be talking utter nonsense?’ she asked suddenly in a changed voice; and doubt fled like a wraith at sunrise. ‘Rather not. I was only hoping—that this _is_ the real you. I’m not simply a phase—am I?—like all the rest?’ At that she turned to him with the lazy uplift of her lashes, and the astonishing blue of her eyes flashed on him like a light. ‘Isn’t it—rather too soon to tell?’ ‘_Is_ it?’ he challenged her boldly, and exulted to see the blood rise in her cheeks. More than that he could not achieve. For another Lauder chorus had just died down and they were nearing the shore.