to meet Paul's searching eyes without a ray of embarrassment or self-consciousness.
"And I suppose that it was because you have seen so few people that you recognised me when we met in the field of rye?"
"Perhaps. I had never known but two men in all my life—young men I mean—until I came here, so I could not very well forget, could I?"
"And I am very glad of it!" he says heartily.
"Are you? I am not! I do not think one is able to judge of whether a man is admirable or the reverse until one has seen a great many."
"Women ought not to see too many men," he says decidedly; "it is bad for them." Paul Vasher is like the rest of his sex, who value their privileges too highly to permit women to encroach the merest jot upon them, and would build so prickly a wall of propriety around us, that we shall not even be able to climb up and see what is going on on the other side.
"That is very hard upon us," I say. "Is it not the author of 'Guy Livingstone' who says, 'that a man must see and admire many roses before he plucks the fairest of them all, his Provence rose, to lay in his breast? You are free to walk about, looking at this flower and that, critically surveying all, able to make your choice after mature deliberation, while we may not look around us or seek to judge for ourselves; on the contrary, we must accept the first flower that is offered to us, think it adorable, perfect, fall down before it in worship, and look at it contentedly to the end of our days!" Here I stop. somewhat out of breath and laughing.
"Is she always bound to take the first?" he asks, looking at me very keenly.
"Almost always," I say, with a heavy sigh. "Must it not be hard when some day, and all too late, a woman who has given
