"I shouldn't let 'em," he grunted.
"If you couldn't help it?"
"I shouldn't let 'em," he repeated doggedly.
"But should you care?"
"Of course I should. What rot you talk. Of course I should. But I shouldn't let them."
"Oh, Roger," she cried, suddenly and pitifully, "they do hurt me sometimes—they do, they do."
Roger looked around him with unusual caution. The Gardens were empty. There was not even a loafer in sight. He put his arm round her, and drew her clumsily to him. She yielded like a tired child, and lay quietly, staring with brimming eyes at the gaudy tulip-bed on the further side of the walk.
"I believe you're about fed up with that school of yours," he said, after a time, as if he had not followed the allusion to Clare.
She nodded.
"I'm not lazy, Roger; you know it's not that. It's just the atmosphere, and the awful crowding. Such a lot of women at close quarters, all enthusiasm and fussing and importance. They're all hard-working, and all unselfish and keen—more than a crowd of men would be, I believe. But that's just it—they're dears when you get them alone, but somehow, all together, they stifle you. And they all have high voices, that squeak when they're keenest. D'you know, that was what first made me like you, Roger—your voice? It's slow, and deep, and restful—such a reasonable voice. You mustn't think me disloyal to the school. The girls are all frightfully interesting, and the women are dears, and there's always Clare—only we do get on each other's nerves."