"That is so," he admitted; "you are very clever. Nevertheless, I do not think, if you were alone now, you would be thinking of plants. You were not when I met you; it was the Revolution, or, perhaps, human nature--you called it the Revolution in a parable, as you often do when you speak your thoughts." "Why do you trouble about my thoughts?" Julia said, impatiently. "How do you know what I think?" "Perhaps I don't," he answered; "only sometimes it seems to me your voice tells me though your words do not." "My voice?" "Yes; it is full of notes like a violin, and speaks more than words. I suppose all voices have many notes really, but people do not often use them; they use only a few. You use many; that is why I like to listen to you when you talk to my parents, or any one. It is like a master playing on an instrument; you make simple words mean much, more than I understand sometimes; you can caress and you can laugh with your voice; I have heard you do it when I have not been able to understand what you caress, or at what you laugh, any more than an ignorant person can understand what the violin says, although he may enjoy to hear it. To-night you do not caress or laugh; there is something black in your thoughts." "That is human nature, as you say," Julia said shortly, ignoring the comment on her voice. "Human nature is a hateful, ugly thing; there is no use in thinking about it." "It has certainly fallen," Joost allowed; "but I have sometimes thought perhaps, if it were not so, it would be a little--a very little--monotonous." "You would not find it dull," Julia told him. "I believe you would not have got on very well in the Garden of Eden, except that, since all the herbs grew after their own kind, there would be no opportunity to hybridise them." But the mystery of production and generation, even in the vegetable world, was not a subject that modesty permitted Joost to discuss with a girl. His manner showed it, to her impatient annoyance, as he hastily introduced another aspect of man's first estate. "If we were not fallen," he added, "we should have no opportunity to rise. That, indeed, would be a loss; is it not the struggle which makes the grand and fine characters which we admire?" "I don't admire them," Julia returned; "I admire the people who are born good, because they are a miracle." He stopped to unfasten the gate; it did not occur to him that she was thinking of himself.