died; she walked away, and stood with her face turned from him.
Confused, and unhappy, he gathered the strewn flowers; and not till he
had collected every one did he get up and shyly take them to her, where
she still stood, gazing into the depths of the larch-wood.


V


What did he know of women, that should make him understand? At his
public school he had seen none to speak to; at Oxford, only this one. At
home in the holidays, not any, save his sister Cicely. The two hobbies
of their guardian, fishing, and the antiquities of his native
county, rendered him averse to society; so that his little Devonshire
manor-house, with its black oak panels and its wild stone-walled park
along the river-side was, from year's end to year's end, innocent of
all petticoats, save those of Cicely and old Miss Tring, the governess.
Then, too, the boy was shy. No, there was nothing in his past, of not
yet quite nineteen years, to go by. He was not of those youths who are
always thinking of conquests. The very idea of conquest seemed to him
vulgar, mean, horrid. There must be many signs indeed before it would
come into his head that a woman was in love with him, especially the one
to whom he looked up, and thought so beautiful. For before all beauty
he was humble, inclined to think himself a clod. It was the part of life
which was always unconsciously sacred, and to be approached trembling.
The more he admired, the more tremulous and diffident he became. And so,
after his one wild moment, when she plucked those sweet-scented blossoms
and dropped them over him, he felt abashed; and walking home beside her
he was quieter than ever, awkward to the depths of his soul.