two-legged creature in a wild desert of a world—don't you want to huddle up close to all the others whose company makes this life seem less lonely?"

She gazed at me for a long, long while in silence.

"That's just what you feel—isn't it?" she said at length. "That's why you live in London on your fifteen hundred a year. You like the country well enough in the summer—I can see you do. You love it even more than you think. But in the winter, you believe you'd be miserable. You've grown into the habit of your theatres and your restaurants which really you hate. Look what you said about the cormorant. You can't do without your crowds of people, and you tell yourself that human nature is the most interesting and most lovable thing in the world. But do you think that you ever see so much of human nature in a crowd as you do in one single individual? Do you think if we saw a whole flight of larks—flight or whatever they call it—do you think we should appreciate them like we do that little fellow up there?"

"This doesn't dispose of winter," said I.

She put her chin on her knees once more, and once more she stared out at sea.

"There is no winter," she said, "except in people's hearts."

"There are no dead," I whispered to myself. In the suddenness of hearing her say it, it sounded as true as that.

"Explain that," said I.

"I can't," she replied. "It's just there is no winter. It's only a word—like saying it's twelve o'clock. There is no twelve o'clock. It's only that the sun's somewhere or other. That's just what it is in winter. In winter the sun's far away—it rains, the sky is grey, the sea is green. Cruikshank and I put on strong boots and mackintoshes and go out for miles into the country and all the time we keep saying, 'Do you remember the primroses in that ditch—do you remember the furze blossom on that bush?' Always 'Do you remember?' and not because they are gone for ever, but because we know that in that very spot we shall see those primroses again, that they are there, warm under the earth, ready and waiting to come up again, more luxuriant"—she screwed up her face over this word—"more luxuriant than ever."

"You're a wonderful woman," said I, suddenly.

What a fool I was. That broke the spell of it all. For suddenly she remembered that she was a woman; suddenly she became conscious 

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