'Have you some lumber, then?' she asked quickly.
The bitter taste of that which had been exquisitely sweet was at this moment very present to him—more bitter, perhaps, than it had ever been. For he regretted now, not that which was past, but its absence from the present; and the curious persistence of Amelie rather vexed him.
'Ah, we all must have a little lumber,' he said, with an unconscious touch of impatience in his voice. 'In this rough and tumble of a world we all get some bits of things broken—ideas, ideals, desires, what you will. They are our lumber; and it is wiser to turn the key on them—not bring them out and try to mend them.'
Amelie noticed the impatience of which he was unconscious.
'Cannot I help you to mend them, Bertie?' she asked, with a wonderful wistfulness in her voice. 'And have I vexed you?'
He threw the grass spearwise down the wind.
'I think you could not really vex me,' he said. 'But you can't help me to mend them; nobody can—not even you.'
She picked up her sketching things in silence, washed out her brushes, and closed her sketch-book.
'Let us forget it all, then,' she said briskly. 'Let us put the hands of the clock back ten minutes, and go on from then. "The murmur of innumerable bees." All June is in that line, is it not? Bertie, what a beautiful June we have had!'
'And it is not over yet,' said he.