"Have you been to Paris?"
"I couldn't think about it if I hadn't."
She gave the laugh which coolly put him from her. "Couldn't you? Poor George!" She balanced from her heels to her toes and back again, with steadying movements of her arms, so that she was like a bird refusing to take flight. "I don't see things plainly like that," she murmured. "It's like a black ball going round and round with sparks inside, and me; and the blackness and the sparks are feelings and thoughts, and things that have happened and are going to happen, all mixing themselves up with the me in the middle. George, do you feel how strange it is? I can't explain, but here we are on the moor, with the sky above us, and the earth underneath—and why? But I'm really rolling over and over in the black ball, and I can't stop and I can't go on. I'm just inside."
"I know," he said. "It's all mixed. It's—" He kicked a heather-bush. "You want a thing and you don't want it—I don't know."
"I always know what I want," she said, and into her thoughtfulness there crept the personal taint. "I want every one to adore me. Good-night, George. I wonder if we shall ever meet again!"
In the garden, with her hands folded on her knee, Helen was sitting meekly on a stool under the poplars and watching the swaying of the tree-tops.
"The young nun at prayer," Miriam said. "I thought you came back to be with Notya."
"She seemed not to want me."
"Then you sacrificed me for nothing. That's just like you."
"How?"