It was fine and cold as Odd walked down the Boulevard St. Germain that afternoon. He walked at a tremendous pace, for human nature hopes to cheat thought by physical effort. Indeed, Peter did not think much, and was convinced that his mind was a comparatively happy blank as he paused before the tall house where Hilda was pursuing her avocations. If he made any definite reflections while he walked up and down between the doorway and the next corner, they were on his last few conversations with Hilda; and then on rather abstract points merely. He had drawn the child out. He had penetrated the reserved mind that acquired for enjoyment, not for display. He had found out that Hilda knew Italian literature, from Dante to Leopardi, almost as well as he himself did, and loved it just as well. The fiction of Russia and Scandinavia was deeply appreciated by her, and the essayists of France. Her tastes were as delicately discriminative as Katherine's, but lacked that metallic assurance of which lately Peter had become rather uncomfortably aware. As for the English tongue, from the old meeting-ground of Chaucer they could range with delightful sympathy to Stevenson's sweet radiance. Peter thought quite intently of this literary survey and evaded any trespassing beyond its limits. His reticence was not put to a prolonged test. Hilda met him before half-a-dozen trips to the corner were accomplished. She showed no signs of conscious guilt, though Peter was not sure that she was not a "foolish baby." "Let us walk," she said, "it is such a lovely day." "We will walk at least till the sun goes. We will just have time to catch the sunset on the Seine." "Yes; what a _lovely_ day! I wish I were ten, with short skirts, and a hoop, that I could run and roll." "You would like a bicycle ride. Come to-morrow with Katherine and me." "I can't. Don't think me a prig, but my model is due and I am finishing my picture. Thanks so much; and this walk is almost as good." "If Palamon is tired I will carry him, Hilda." "Oh, he isn't tired. See how he pulls at his cord. The sunlight is getting into his veins. What delicious air." "The sunlight is getting into your veins too, Hilda. You are looking a little as you should look." Hilda did not ask him how she should look. It was an original characteristic of Hilda's that she did not seem at all anxious to talk about herself, and Odd continued, looking down at her profile-- "That's what you ought to have--sunlight. You are a little white flower that has grown in a shadow." Hilda did not glance up at him; she smiled rather distantly. "What a sad simile!" "Is it a true one, Hilda?" "I don't think so. I never thought of myself in that sentimental light. I suppose to friendly eyes every life has a certain pathos." "No; some lives are too evidently and merely flaunting in the sunlight for even friendly eyes to poetize--to sentimentalize, as you rather unkindly said." "Sunlight is poetic, too."