She asked him to spend a week at Wallingford when the season was over. "I have very few friends," she said; "and no one but you has ever helped me to understand." He wondered to what he had helped her, and whether he would recognize it if she told him; but he did not wonder if he might remit the helping; the disadvantage in the gift of oneself being that the giving is never at an end. So he came to Wallingford again in September, when the moonlight fell nightly on white veils of mist, and the world took on a golden ripeness in the mellow silent days. Some letters, in the meanwhile, had passed between them; letters which might have made Terence uneasy had he known what they meant. Instead, he answered them, and consigned their intentions to the chaos of feminine incomprehensibility. Some of that chaos took a shape during his second stay at Wallingford sufficiently definite and disconcerting. It was probably only what had been put, to no purpose, in her letters, but it had another significance when spoken with rather uncomfortable pauses and lit with the intensity of a woman's very lovely eyes. To mistake its meaning was impossible; to ignore it seemed to Terence a contemptible discretion. He could not withdraw his sympathy because it had been so dangerously misapplied, but he tried, with fraternal frankness, to abstract from it the odour of personality with which she had scented it. He hoped to animate her with the big issues of life, but to a woman there is often no issue bigger than a man's devotion. As they hung in the skiff beneath the birches of the mill-pond one breathless afternoon, she let him realize the fruitlessness of his intentions. The sun that filled the drowsy air fell in dazzling patches on her white frock; there was not a sound save the dull drone of the weir, and deep in the shade a kingfisher sat motionless above the water, like a blue flame upon the bough. She had been silent for some while after his last remark, looking away from him towards the river; then, to Terence's dismay, she leant forward, hiding her face in her hands, and began to sob. He was paralyzed by his ignorance of any cause for tears, perplexed with self-reproaches, helplessness, and pity. It seemed equally absurd to ask why she was crying, or to offer comfort until he knew. He sat wretchedly mute for some moments, and at last begged her to let him hear what ailed her. She did not answer till he had repeated the request, and then faltered between her sobs: "Oh, you wouldn't understand, you couldn't understand: I've got no one to care for me, no one, no one!" He could think of no response to that which did not sound inane. He had not heard a woman cry since his sisters left the schoolroom, and no other form of consolation occurred to him than the brotherly caresses which had served him then. Yet not till his ineptitude and apparent apathy became intolerable did he lean forward from the thwart and rest his hand upon her knee.