“And did you write anything?” she said in an awed voice.
“Yes,” he answered solemnly, “a very long story with heaps of people and lots of chapters. I have it at home. They liked it down in the kitchen, but it never had an end.”
“Why not?” Janet asked.
“Because, like the Old Woman in the Shoe, I had so many children that I didn’t know what to do. I had so many people that I simply didn’t know what to do with them all. And then I grew out of that. I went to Oxford, and then came the last part of the adventure.”
“Where is Oxford?” she asked him.
“Oh! It’s a university. Men go there after leaving school. It’s a place where a man learns a good many useless habits and one or two beautiful ones. Only the beautiful ones want looking for. The thing I found was walking.”
He looked at her and laughed for the very joy of being so near to her. In the half light that the lamp flung upon them the gold of her hair was caught and fell like a cloud about her face, the light blue of her dress was the night sky, and her eyes were the stars. Oh! it was a fine adventure, this love! There had been no key to the world before this came, and now the casket was opened and stuffs of great price, jewels and the gold-embroidered cloths of God’s workshop were spread before him. And then a great awe fell upon him. She was so young and so pure that he felt suddenly that all the coarse thoughts and deeds of the world rose in a dark mist between them, and sent him, as the angel with the flaming sword sent Adam, out of so white a country.
But she suddenly leant over and touched his arm. “Oh! do look at Miss Minns!” she said. Miss Minns was falling asleep and struggling valiantly against the temptation. Her hands mechanically clicked the needles and clutched the piece of cloth at which she was working, but her head nodded violently at the table as though it was telling a story and furiously emphasising facts. The shadow on the wall was gigantic, a huge fantastic Miss Minns swinging from side to side on the ceiling and swelling and subsiding like a curtain in the wind. The struggle lasted for a very short time. Soon the clicking of the needles ceased, there was a furious attempt to hold the cloth, and at last it fell with a soft noise to the ground. Miss Minns, with her head on her breast, slept.
“That’s better,” said Janet, settling herself back in her chair. “Now about the walking!”
“Ah! you’re fond of it too,” he said. “I can see that. And it’s the only thing, you know. It’s the only thing that doesn’t change and grow monotonous. You get close right down to earth. They talk about their nature and culture and the rest, but they haven’t known what life is until they’ve felt the back of a high brown hill and the breast of a hard white road. That saved me! I was muddled before. I didn’t know what things stood for, and I was unhappy. My own set weren’t any use at all, they were aiming at nothing. Not that I felt superior, but it was simply that that sort of thing wasn’t any good for me. You couldn’t see things clearly for the dust that everybody made. So I left the dust and now I’m here.”