an inquiry would be premature; I must leave it to a later chance.
"Well, don't YOU be proud," I contented myself with saying.
"Don't hide from me altogether."

"Oh, I must stay with my aunt," she returned, without looking at me.
And at the same moment, abruptly, without any ceremony of parting,
she quitted me and disappeared, leaving me to make my own way downstairs.
I remained a while longer, wandering about the bright desert (the sun was
pouring in) of the old house, thinking the situation over on the spot.
Not even the pattering little serva came to look after me, and I
reflected that after all this treatment showed confidence.



IV


Perhaps it did, but all the same, six weeks later,
toward the middle of June, the moment when Mrs. Prest undertook
her annual migration, I had made no measurable advance.
I was obliged to confess to her that I had no results to speak of.
My first step had been unexpectedly rapid, but there
was no appearance that it would be followed by a second.
I was a thousand miles from taking tea with my hostesses--
that privilege of which, as I reminded Mrs. Prest, we both
had had a vision. She reproached me with wanting boldness,
and I answered that even to be bold you must have an opportunity:
you may push on through a breach but you can't batter down
a dead wall. She answered that the breach I had already made
was big enough to admit an army and accused me of wasting precious