They walked on a way in silence, and then she said, quietly, as was her manner, always: "Do you think I could help?"
He seized her hand and she looked up into his eyes, smiling.
"Oh, if you could!" he cried; and then: "Would you try?" But before she could answer he flung down her hand saying: "But no, you couldn't; what was I thinking of!"
They were walking by the river to the east, where, on the right, the hill rose sheer—a tangle of vivid green—from the heart of which a spring leapt and tinkled over smooth, white pebbles, to lose itself again in the earth below, bubbling noisily.
At his expression, or, more at the tone he employed in its utterance, she shrank from him, and then, regardless of her steps, sped half-way up the hill, beside the spring course. There she flung herself upon a mossy plot, face down.
Crowley called to her from the road, but she did not answer; he went to her, and stooping touched her shoulder. Her whole body, prone before him, quivered. She was crying.
He talked to her a long time, there in the woodland, silence about them save for the calls of the birds.
She turned her wet eyes upon his face.
"Oh, to think every one doubts me!" she murmured. "You laughed at me when I asked you if I could help—you think I'm only a toy-like girl—a sort of great cat to be fondled always."
She seized a stick, broke it impetuously across her knee and rose before him.