The noise of Kensington High Street reached us like the growl of some tired animal. An owl came across from Holland Park and alighted in a tree near us. "You should have married him," said Essie at last. "Married him!" I exclaimed, "but you don't understand." And I went over the whole dreadful story again--at full length. Love affairs are never condensed. If they are told at all they are recounted in full. "I don't see that any of those things matter," she said when I had finished, or rather when I paused. "Where is he now?" "In Turkistan, I believe." "Why not go to Turkistan?" She spoke as if it were just round the corner. "Turkistan!" "Well, it's somewhere on the map, I suppose. What does it matter where it is." "And perhaps when I got there I might find he had set up a harem of Turkistan women." "You might." "Or that he had long since left for America." "Just so." "Or that he did not want me." "All these things are possible." The owl began to call through the dusk, and, not far away, somewhere in the square a gentle lady owl's voice answered him. "There are things," said Essie, "which one can measure, and it is easy to know how to act about them, and whether it is worth while to act at all. Most things one can measure, but there are in life just a few things, a very few, which one cannot measure, or put a value on, or pay a certain price for, and no more, because they are on a plane where foot-rules and weighing machines and money do not exist. Love is one of these things. When we begin to weigh how much we will give to love, what we are willing to sacrifice for it, we are trying to drag it down to a mercantile basis and to lay it on the table of the money changers on which things are bought and sold, and bartered and equivalent value given." "You think I don't love him," I said, cut to the quick. "I am sure," said Essie, "that you don't love him yet, but I think you are on the road. Who was it who said 'The ways of love are harder Than thoroughfares of stones.' Whoever it was, he knew what he was talking about. You have found the thoroughfare stony, and you rebel and are angry, very angry, and desert your fellow traveller. He, poor man, did not make the road. I expect he is just as angry and foot-sore as you are." "He was a year ago. I don't know what he is now. It is a year since he wrote." Essie knitted in silence. At last I said desperately: "I have told you everything. Do you think it's possible he still cares for me?" Essie waited a long minute before answering. "I don't know," she said, and then added, "but I think you will presently go to Turkistan and find out."