He was scarcely listening. Surely no woman ever had such wonderful hair as Philippa’s. His hands ached to touch it, to feel it running through his fingers. He got up abruptly, and began to pace the grass plot as he had paced it that morning when he had been thinking of her. Now she was before him with her big, velvety eyes, her marvellous hair, her long slender limbs. He realized presently that she was still speaking. “I suppose it is fatally easy,” she was saying meditatively, “for a married woman who has led a sheltered life to grow a little petty and narrow. After all, it is the worker, the struggler, who purifies her nature. Don’t you think so? But in time, I think, even the married woman may learn.” “Learn what?” he murmured, absently, throwing himself once more into the cane chair beside her. “To love less selfishly,” she returned, looking down at him; “to admit the value of every ennobling friendship--a friendship such as ours, Fergus! What can it mean but good? Good for both of us. Good for _her_, too, if only she would take it so,” she added, softly. Robert made a restless movement. The spell of her presence was somehow broken. He felt worried, exasperated, angry with himself--almost angry with Philippa. She expected too much of human nature. Certainly too much of _his_. “But, as a matter of fact, you can’t get a woman to take it like that!” he exclaimed, in spite of himself. “Consider our case if you like,” he added, in an injured tone. “What woman would believe in mere friendship, if she knew we had met--how often? Nearly every day, as a matter of fact, for the last three months. It isn’t in human nature!” He spoke almost irritably, prompted by an undefined notion that, having put such a strain upon any woman’s credulity, it was ridiculous not to have justified her disbelief. For a moment he wished Philippa had been a less noble woman. She sighed. “Then I suppose you were quite right not to tell her,” she said, descending abruptly upon the personal pronoun. “Your idea is to let her grow used to our friendship, here in the country, under her eyes, so that she may gradually come to believe in its purity?” Robert felt a little nonplussed. He had thought this particular idea emanated from Philippa herself, but as she spoke of it decidedly as his, she must have no doubt that he had suggested it. In any case, it was scarcely chivalrous to undeceive her. “Perhaps you are right,” she murmured, after a moment. Presently, as Robert watched her, she smiled, slowly, indulgently, as a mother smiles at the waywardness of a little child. “How charming Cecily is!” she said. “She always appealed to me, even as a schoolgirl. I always wanted to _protect_ her in some way. She was so fragile--so sweet. She had very little character,--as a child, I mean,--but then she was so graceful, so lovable, one scarcely missed it.” Robert was silent. He felt vaguely uncomfortable.