Not that he did not enjoy the incense she burned before him, the unabashed expression of her admiration, but a man wants room for his lovemaking, and once he is embarked on that pleasant exercise he does not want the words taken out of his mouth. Ingeborg was always taking the words out of his mouth and then flinging them back at him again with, as it were, a flower stuck behind their ear. He had known that if once he could pierce through to her self-consciousness she would leave off doing this, she would become aware that he was a man and she was a woman. She would become passive. She would let go of persisting that he was a demi-god and she a sort of humble pew-opener or its equivalent in his temple. Now apparently he had pierced through, and her silence as she walked beside him with her eyes on the ground was more sweet to him than anything she had ever said. Before, however, they had reached the gap in the lilac hedge that formed the simple entrance on that side to the Dremmel garden there she was beginning again. "In Redchester--" she began. "Oh," he interrupted, "are you going to give me a description of the town and its environs so as to keep me from giving you a description of yourself?" "No," she laughed. "You know I could listen to you for ever." The same frankness; the same shining look. Ingram wanted to kick. "I was thinking," she went on, "how nobody in Redchester ever talked about kisses. Even little ones." "So you are shocked?" "No. What a word! I'm full of wonder at the miracle of you--_you_--being so kind to me--_me!_ Saying such beautiful things, thinking such beautiful things." This trick of gratitude was really maddening. "Tell me about Redchester," he said shortly. "Don't they kiss each other there?" "Oh, yes. But they don't have them in their eyes." He shuddered. "And people don't mention them, unless it's aunts. And then not like that. No aunt could ever possibly be of the pregnant parts needful for the invention of a phrase like that. And if she were I don't suppose I'd want to listen." "You do at least then want to listen?" "Want to? Aren't I listening always to every word you say with both my ears? What a mercy," she added with thankfulness, "what a real mercy, what an escape, that you're _not_ an aunt!" "You can't call it exactly a hairbreadth escape," he said moodily. "I don't feel even the rough beginnings of an aunt anywhere about me."