He snatches a hasty glance of suspicion at her. Is this her revenge for his neglect of her? But nothing can look more innocent or less ironical than her small profile, bent towards the gigantic forget-me-nots and the pulmonaria, azure as gentians.
"Perhaps."
"The big fish"—her little face breaking into one of her lovely smiles, which, by a turn of her head from side to full, she offers in its completeness to his gaze—"swallows up all the little gudgeons! Poor little gudgeons."
"Poor little gudgeons!" he echoes stupidly, and then begins to laugh at his own wool-gathering.
"And now I suppose you will be going directly—going home?" pursues she, looking at him and his laughter with a soft surprise.
"I hope so; and—and—you too?"
She gives a start, and the sky-coloured nosegay in her hand drops into her lap.
"We—we? Why should we go home? We have nothing pleasant to go to, and"—looking round with a passionate relish at mountain, and suffused far plain, and sappy spring grass—"we are so well—so infinitely well here!" Then, pulling herself together, and speaking in a more composed key, "But yes, of course we, too, shall go by-and-by; this cannot last for ever—nothing lasts for ever. That is the one thought that has kept me alive all these years; but now——"
She breaks off.
"But now?"