cutting of bread and butter appeared to me, by a long way, the most
dangerous episode. Sometimes I amused myself by supposing that to their
minds this world of ours must be wearing a perfectly overwhelming aspect,
and that their heads contained respectively awfully serious and extremely
desperate thoughts--and trying to imagine what an exciting time they must
be having of it in the inscrutable depths of their being. This last was
difficult to a volatile person (I am sure that to the Fynes I was a
volatile person) and the amusement in itself was not very great; but
still--in the country--away from all mental stimulants! . . . My efforts
had invested them with a sort of amusing profundity.

But when Fyne and I got back into the room, then in the searching,
domestic, glare of the lamp, inimical to the play of fancy, I saw these
two stripped of every vesture it had amused me to put on them for fun.
Queer enough they were. Is there a human being that isn't that--more or
less secretly? But whatever their secret, it was manifest to me that it
was neither subtle nor profound. They were a good, stupid, earnest
couple and very much bothered. They were that--with the usual unshaded
crudity of average people. There was nothing in them that the lamplight
might not touch without the slightest risk of indiscretion.

Directly we had entered the room Fyne announced the result by saying
"Nothing" in the same tone as at the gate on his return from the railway
station. And as then Mrs. Fyne uttered an incisive "It's what I've
said," which might have been the veriest echo of her words in the garden.
We three looked at each other as if on the brink of a disclosure. I
don't know whether she was vexed at my presence. It could hardly be
called intrusion--could it? Little Fyne began it. It had to go on. We
stood before her, plastered with the same mud (Fyne was a sight!),
scratched by the same brambles, conscious of the same experience. Yes.