“Perhaps. I care. I like people who are well-made and beautiful. They are of some use in the world. I understand why they are there. I cannot understand why the ugly and crippled are there, however healthy they may feel inside. Don’t you know how Turner spoils his pictures by introducing a man like a bolster in the foreground? Well, in actual life every landscape is spoilt by men of worse shapes still.” “You sound like a bolster with the stuffing out.” They laughed. She always blew his cobwebs away like this, with a puff of humorous mountain air. Just now—the associations he attached to her were various—she reminded him of a heroine of Meredith’s—but a heroine at the end of the book. All had been written about her. She had played her mighty part, and knew that it was over. He and he alone was not content, and wrote for her daily a trivial and impossible sequel. Last time they had talked about Gerald. But that was some six months ago, when things felt easier. Today Gerald was the faintest blur. Fortunately the conversation turned to Mr. Pembroke and to education. Did women lose a lot by not knowing Greek? “A heap,” said Rickie, roughly. But modern languages? Thus they got to Germany, which he had visited last Easter with Ansell; and thence to the German Emperor, and what a to-do he made; and from him to our own king (still Prince of Wales), who had lived while an undergraduate at Madingley Hall. Here it was. And all the time he thought, “It is hard on her. She has no right to be walking with me. She would be ill with disgust if she knew. It is hard on her to be loved.” They looked at the Hall, and went inside the pretty little church. Some Arundel prints hung upon the pillars, and Agnes expressed the opinion that pictures inside a place of worship were a pity. Rickie did not agree with this. He said again that nothing beautiful was ever to be regretted. “You’re cracked on beauty,” she whispered—they were still inside the church. “Do hurry up and write something.” “Something beautiful?” “I believe you can. I’m going to lecture you seriously all the way home. Take care that you don’t waste your life.” They continued the conversation outside. “But I’ve got to hate my own writing. I believe that most people come to that stage—not so early though. What I write is too silly. It can’t happen. For instance, a stupid vulgar man is engaged to a lovely young lady. He wants her to live in the towns, but she only cares for woods. She shocks him this way and that, but gradually he tames her, and makes her nearly as dull as he is. One day she has a last explosion—over the snobby wedding presents—and flies out of the drawing-room window, shouting, ‘Freedom and truth!’ Near the house is a little dell full of fir-trees, and she runs into it. He comes there the next moment. But she’s gone.” “Awfully exciting. Where?” “Oh Lord, she’s a Dryad!” cried Rickie, in great disgust. “She’s turned into a tree.”