"Oh, no," she said rather awkwardly, her excessive youth showing nowhere more clearly than in her inability to put him at his ease. "Oh, no, I'm glad you came--to say good-bye." "I'm going to work very hard. There's a fellow--Eitel von Gleichroeder, I don't know if you've heard of him--who's taken a fancy to me, and says he'll coach me if I'll take up the violin professionally." "I didn't know you played." "Yes--but I'd no idea I was any good till I met this chap. He says I ought to make quite a decent thing out of it. I--I think it's worth trying." "Oh, yes." "You see," he continued, his voice shaking with emotion, "I want to start a new life--to be respectable, I suppose you'd call it. If I win fame as a violinist--and von Gleichroeder thinks I may--I--I shall have lived down everything." "Yes ... of course." It was embarrassment, not lack of interest, that made her replies so trite. Memories of their friendship--now dim and far-off, separated from her by many wonderful happenings--were creeping up to her and filling her with a vague uneasiness. As for Nigel, he realised now what had taken place. He understood why his tongue had suddenly become tied in her presence, and his eagerness collapsed into shuffling uncouthness. He had come to Shovelstrode to speak to a little girl--and he had found a woman. Tony the schoolgirl, the hoyden, the gay comrade, was now nothing but a little ghost haunting the slopes of Ashdown and the secret lanes of Kent. In her place stood a woman--come suddenly, as the woman always comes--and the woman, he knew, was trying to call back the girl, and see things from her eyes once more--and could not. "Tony--Miss Strife--I wanted to tell you this, just to show you I'm not always going to be a convict on ticket-of-leave." "I'm sure you won't. I hope you'll become very famous." The words passed her lips in jerks. Her memories of him carried something very like repulsion. The more she struggled to revisualise the comradeship of two months ago, the greater was her distaste and humiliation. The kindest attitude possible for her now was one of embarrassed shyness. At first she had tried to heal herself with her memories, but as soon as she had worked back to them she found their sweet secrets all sicklied with bitterness and shame. He looked steadfastly at her, and he saw what had happened. "Tony--you don't want to know me any longer--you want to forget we ever were friends. There's no good denying it, for I can see it." She stood motionless, her lips white, her hands clenched in front of her. "It's true--I can see it," he repeated. She did not speak. Her memories were calling very loud, and there were tears in the voices, softening the shame. "You can't bear the thought of having once been my friend." Tears were rising in her throat, and with her tears the little school-girl who had run away came back, and showed her face again before she went for ever.