He turned his head quickly and looked at her.
"Yes," he said; "what is it?"
"You ought to be ashamed not to talk to me," Stella said, with sudden fierceness. "Doesn't it make any difference to you that we're friends?"
He put his hand over hers.
"Yes," he said, smiling; "but I happen to be rather afraid of differences."
He took his hand away as quickly as he had touched her.
"Do you know," she asked in a low voice, "what was the saddest thing I ever saw—the saddest and the most terrible?"
"No," he said, turning his eyes carefully back to the silver birches; "but I have an idea that it was something that happened to somebody else."
"Yes," said Stella; "it happened to a sea-gull. It was the only time I ever went to the sea. Eurydice had been ill, and I went away with her. I think I was fourteen. I had gone out alone after tea on to the cliffs when I saw a motionless sea-gull at the very edge. I walked close up to it. It was as still as a stone, and when I came up, O Julian, one of its wings was broken! It could not fly again. Its eyes were searching the sea with such despair in them; it knew it could not fly again. I picked it up and carried it home. We did everything we could for it, but it died—like that, without ever changing the despair in its eyes—because it could not fly."
"Lucky brute to be able to die," said Julian under his breath. Stella said nothing. "Why did you tell me?" he asked after a pause. "Any lesson attached to it?"