"You could learn; we could both learn. Let's pretend for a moment that we're really going to spend our lives together, anyhow. Let's leave Mrs. Basingstoke out of it. Would Miss Basingstoke have been able to endure such a life?" "Miss Basingstoke would have loved it," she said. "Miss Basingstoke would have done her best to learn, and--she isn't really stupid, you know--I think Miss Basingstoke would have succeeded." "It would need patience," he said, "patience and bravery and loving-kindness and gentleness and firmness and unselfishness." "And curiosity," she said. "That quality, at least, Miss Basingstoke has. She would have wanted to know all about everything, and that's one way of learning. She wants, now, to know ever so much more. Tell her everything that you've thought of about it, everything you've decided or not decided." "You'll be kind to my darling dream, then," he said. "Well, here goes." And with that he told her, and she listened and questioned, and he answered again till the shadows had grown heavy in the valley and they were very late indeed for dinner. You cannot be long in Llanberis without wanting to "see over" a slate-quarry. It was on their fifth day that the desire came to these two. The mention of Colonel Bertram's name gained for them a personally conducted tour through the rows of little slate-roofed sheds where skilled workmen strip and chip and shape the flakes of quarried slate till they are the size and form needed for roofing cottages and schools and Nonconformist chapels. Having seen how the slate is treated in the sheds, they were taken into the quarry itself to see how the slate is got. A big slate-quarry is a very impressive sight. You walk across a great amphitheater whose walls of slate rise high above you, their green-trimmed edges sharply cut against the sky. You pick your way among pools of water so smooth, so clear, that they reflect like mirrors the blue sky and the high slate walls of the quarry. One such pool--the largest--lay in the middle of the vast amphitheater, and in it the towering cliffs of slate were reflected even more clearly than in the others. "I never saw such reflections," she was saying, as they skirted the big pond. "They're almost more real than the real thing. I am glad we came here; it's all so clear and bright and new-looking. I wonder--" "I wouldn't walk quite so near the edge, if I was you, sir," said the foreman, who was their guide. "Why?" Edward asked, gazing at the reflection of high cliffs in the pool at his side, "is the water deep--"