"You always listen now, Monsieur," she said. "Why have you grown so silent?"
"You know more than I do, Mademoiselle."
"I?" she exclaimed in surprise. "I only know about horses." Then she laughed. "Really, we both know nothing. We can only guess and guess."
And that was the truth. Pamela's ideas of the world were as visionary, as dreamlike as his, but they were not his, as he was quick to recognise. The instincts of her class, her traditions, the influence of her friends, were all audible in her voice as well as in her words. To her the world was a great flower garden of pleasure with plenty of room for horses. To him it was a crowded place of ennobling strife.
"But it's pleasant work guessing," she continued, "isn't it? Then why have you stopped?"
"I will tell you, Mademoiselle. I am beginning to guess through your eyes."
The whistle of a train, the train from Paris, mounted through the still air to their ears.
"Well," said Pamela, with a shrug of impatience, "we shall both know the truth some time."
"You will, Mademoiselle," said the schoolmaster, suddenly falling out of his dream.
Pamela looked quickly at him. The idea that he would be left behind, that he would stay here all his life listening to the sing-song drone of the children in the schoolroom, teaching over and over again with an infinite weariness the same elementary lessons, until he became shabby and worn as the lesson-books he handled, had never struck her till this moment. The trouble which clouded his face was reflected by sympathy upon hers.