We had left Miles indoors, on the red cushion of a deep
window seat; he had wished to finish a book, and I had been
glad to encourage a purpose so laudable in a young man whose
only defect was an occasional excess of the restless.
His sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out,
and I strolled with her half an hour, seeking the shade,
for the sun was still high and the day exceptionally warm.
I was aware afresh, with her, as we went, of how,
like her brother, she contrived--it was the charming thing
in both children--to let me alone without appearing to drop
me and to accompany me without appearing to surround.
They were never importunate and yet never listless.
My attention to them all really went to seeing them amuse
themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle they seemed
actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer.
I walked in a world of their invention--they had no occasion whatever
to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being,
for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game of
the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior,
my exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure.
I forget what I was on the present occasion; I only remember
that I was something very important and very quiet and that Flora
was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, as we
had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof.

Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the
other side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator.
The way this knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing
in the world--the strangest, that is, except the very much
stranger in which it quickly merged itself. I had sat down with