“It does,” she cried. “You were always making me to be not myself.” He laughed shortly. “But is it a matter of surroundings?” he said. He had considered her all spirit. “I am like a plant,” she replied. “I can only grow in my own soil.” They came to a place where the undergrowth shrank away, leaving a bare, brown space, pillared with the brick-red and purplish trunks of pine trees. On the fringe, hung the sombre green of elder trees, with flat flowers in bud, and below were bright, unfurling pennons of fern. In the midst of the bare space stood a keeper’s log hut. Pheasant-coops were lying about, some occupied by a clucking hen, some empty. Hilda walked over the brown pine-needles to the hut, took a key from among the eaves, and opened the door. It was a bare wooden place with a carpenter’s bench and form, carpenter’s tools, an axe, snares, traps, some skins pegged down, everything in order. Hilda closed the door. Syson examined the weird flat coats of wild animals, that were pegged down to be cured. She turned some knotch in the side wall, and disclosed a second, small apartment. “How romantic!” said Syson. “Yes. He is very curious—he has some of a wild animal’s cunning—in a nice sense—and he is inventive, and thoughtful—but not beyond a certain point.” She pulled back a dark green curtain. The apartment was occupied almost entirely by a large couch of heather and bracken, on which was spread an ample rabbit-skin rug. On the floor were patchwork rugs of cat-skin, and a red calf-skin, while hanging from the wall were other furs. Hilda took down one, which she put on. It was a cloak of rabbit-skin and of white fur, with a hood, apparently of the skins of stoats. She laughed at Syson from out of this barbaric mantle, saying: “What do you think of it?” “Ah—! I congratulate you on your man,” he replied. “And look!” she said. In a little jar on a shelf were some sprays, frail and white, of the first honeysuckle. “They will scent the place at night,” she said. He looked round curiously. “Where does he come short, then?” he asked. She gazed at him for a few moments. Then, turning aside: “The stars aren’t the same with him,” she said. “You could make them flash and quiver, and the forget-me-nots come up at me like phosphorescence. You could make things _wonderful_. I have found it out—it is true. But I have them all for myself, now.” He laughed, saying: “After all, stars and forget-me-nots are only luxuries. You ought to make poetry.” “Aye,” she assented. “But I have them all now.” Again he laughed bitterly at her.