"Nay," said he, "but I am in downright earnest. For every effect there must be an adequate cause. You may not understand yourself. The why and wherefore of your action may be hard to discover, but I was wrong when I said that it was unfathomable. Given skill and perseverance, the most subtle compound must yield its analysis, but it is not given to every man to submit a woman's actions to the test, and I beg you to believe that I was not impertinent enough to make any such suggestion." "Nevertheless," I said, "I may some day allow you to put my actions into the crucible, and see if you can find my real motives. I confess I do not understand myself, and I have nothing to conceal. I think I should rather like to be analysed." "Then I may come again?" he asked. "You may come to be photographed, of course," I replied. I wonder how old he is, and what he does! CHAPTER XIII WHITSUNTIDE EXPERIENCES New sensations have elbowed and jostled each other to secure my special attention this Whitsuntide, until I have been positively alarmed for my mental equilibrium. The good people here seem so sedate on ordinary occasions that one fails to realise that after all there is a good deal of the peacock and the kitten in the make-up of many of them; but Whitsuntide reveals this. The peacock in them manifests itself as they strut up and down in new clothing of brilliant dye, affecting an unconsciousness and unconcern which deceives nobody. The shocks I received during that memorable Sunday, when the village turned out in its new finery, I still experience, like the after-tremors of an earthquake. Pray do not imagine that Windyridge knows nothing of the rule of fashion. Every mother's daughter, though not every daughter's mother, owns her sway and is her devoted subject. If the imperious Dame bids her votaries hobble, the Windyridge belle limps awkwardly to and fro--on Sundays and feast days--in proud and painful obedience, heedless of the unconcealed sneers and contempt of her elders. If headgear after the form of the beehive or the castle of the termite ant is decreed, she counts it a joy, like any fashionable lady of fortune, to suffer the eclipse of her good looks under the vilest monstrosity the milliner's ingenuity can devise. Ah, me! How fine a line, after all, divides Windyridge from Mayfair! The kitten in them gambols and makes fun whole-heartedly for several hours at a stretch on the afternoon of Whit Monday, and with such kindliness and good humour that one cannot help feeling that the world is very young and one's self not so very old either.