always--always. I suppose it's because we're two different beings,
and no two beings can ever know each other in this world, not altogether.
We're what the Chevalier calls 'separate entities.' I seem to understand
his odd, wise talk better lately. He said the other day: 'Lonely we come
into the world, and lonely we go out of it.' That's what I mean. It
makes me shudder sometimes, that part of us which lives alone for ever.
We go running on as happy as can be, like Biribi there in the garden, and
all at once we stop short at a hedge, just as he does there--a hedge just
too tall to look over and with no foothold for climbing. That's what I
want so much; I want to look over the Hedge."

When she spoke like this to Philip, as she sometimes did, she seemed
quite unconscious that he was a listener, it was rather as if he were
part of her and thinking the same thoughts. To Philip she seemed
wonderful. He had never bothered his head in that way about abstract
things when he was her age, and he could not understand it in her. What
was more, he could not have thought as she did if he had tried. She had
that sort of mind which accepts no stereotyped reflection or idea; she
worked things out for herself. Her words were her own, and not
another's. She was not imitative, nor yet was she bizarre; she was
individual, simple, inquiring.

"That's the thing that hurts most in life," she added presently; "that
trying to find and not being able to--voila, what a child I am to babble
so!" she broke off with a little laugh, which had, however, a plaintive
note. There was a touch of undeveloped pathos in her character, for she
had been left alone too young, been given responsibility too soon.

He felt he must say something, and in a sympathetic tone he replied: