“My dear Milly, the motions you go through, the resentment you profess, are all a kicking up of dust which I blow away with a breath,” her companion replied. “But it doesn’t matter; go on—say anything you like. I came to see you for recreation, to enjoy myself without effort of my own. I scarcely ventured to hope, however, that you’d make me laugh—I’ve been so dismal for a long time. In fact I’m dismal still. I wish I had your disposition. My mirth, as you see, is a bit feverish.” “The first thing I require of any friend is that he should respect me,” Miss Henning announced. “You lead a bad life. I know what to think about that,” she continued irrelevantly. “And is it through respect for _you_ that you wish me to lead a better one? To-day then is so much saved out of my wickedness. Let us get on the grass,” Hyacinth pursued; “it’s innocent and pastoral to feel it under one’s feet. It’s jolly to be with you. You understand everything.” “I don’t understand everything you say, but I understand everything you hide,” the young woman returned as the great central expanse of the Park, looking intensely green and browsable, stretched away before them. “Then I shall soon become a mystery to you, for I mean from this time forth to cease to seek safety in concealment. You’ll know nothing about me then—for it will be all under your nose.” “Well, there’s nothing so pretty as nature,” Millicent observed at a venture, surveying the smutty sheep who find pasturage in the fields that extend from Knightsbridge to the Bayswater Road. “What will you do when you’re so bad you can’t go to the shop?” she added with a sudden transition. And when he asked why he should ever be so bad as that she said she could see he _was_ in a fever: she hadn’t noticed it at first because he never had had any more complexion than a cheese. Was it something he had caught in some of those back slums where he went prying about with his mad ideas? It served him right for taking as little good into such places as ever came out of them. Would his fine friends—a precious lot _they_ were, that put it off on him to do all the nasty part—would they find the doctor and the port wine and the money and all the rest when he was laid up, perhaps for months, through their putting such rot into his head and his putting it into others that could carry it even less? She stopped on the grass in the watery sunshine and bent on her companion a pair of eyes in which he noted afresh a stirred curiosity, a friendly, reckless ray, a possibility of ardour, a pledge of really closer comradeship. Suddenly she brought out, quitting the tone of exaggerated derision she had employed a moment before: “You precious little rascal, you’ve got something on your heart! Has your Princess given you the sack?” “My poor girl, your talk’s a queer mixture,” he resignedly sighed. “But it may well be. It’s not queerer than my life.” “Well, I’m glad you admit that!” Milly cried as she walked on with a flutter of ribbons.