And because she was intelligent and healthy, in her perplexity she had tried to reason--had found nothing to account for her state of mind unless love could account for it--and knowing nothing of love, had admitted the possibility to herself and even to him. Intelligence, candour, ignorance of deeper emotion--coupled with the normal mental and physical innocence of a young girl--this was the character she had been born with and which had naturally and logically developed through nineteen years of mental and bodily cultivation. The girl was most fatally equipped for an awakening. * * * * * He stood up when she appeared, knocked out his pipe and advanced to meet her. He had been doing a lot of thinking. And he had concluded to talk very frankly to her about her friendship with him--frankly, kindly, discouraging gaily any mistaken notion she might harbour that there could be any room, any reason, any fitness for a deeper sentiment in this friendship--anything more significant than the delightful and frank affection now existing between them. "Shall we walk in the forest, Karen?" he said. "Yes, please." So they turned into a sentier which curved away through a fern-set rabbit warren, over a wooden footbridge, and then led them on through alternate flecks of sunshine and shadow through a noble forest of beech and oak. The green and brown mast lay thick under-foot, premature harvest of windfalls--perhaps the prodigality of those reckless sylvan spendthrifts, the squirrels and jays. Here and there a cock-pheasant ran through a spinny at their approach; rabbits scuttled into wastes of bracken as yet uncurled and unblemished by a frost; distant crashes and a dull galloping signalled the unseen flight of deer. Now and then the dark disturbance of the forest floor betrayed where the horny, furry snouts of boar had left furrows of fresh black earth amid the acorns. They came upon the stream again--or perhaps a different little brook, splashing and curling amid its ferns and green, drenched mosses. Stepping stones crossed it; Karen passed lightly, surely, on little flying feet, and stood laughing on the other side as he paused to poke about in the pool in hopes of starting a trout into arrowy flight. When he crossed she had seated herself under a fir, the branches of which swept the ground around her; and so utterly had she vanished that she was obliged to call him before he could discover her whereabouts. "Under this green tent," she said, "if I had a bed, and some books, and clothes, and food, and my maid and--a piano, I could live most happily all summer." She laughed, looked at him--"if I had all these and--_you_," she added. "Why drag _me_ into such a perfect paradise?" "I shouldn't _drag_ you," she said gravely. "I should merely tell you where I lived." "I didn't mean it that way." "You might have, with reason. I have demanded a great deal of your time."