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 man, might have been certain of his own power; and yet, look: I was a chit of a girl, I was sitting with a book where I had no business to be, in his own garden, when he suddenly came upon me, an ignorant girl of seventeen, a most uninviting creature with a tousled head, in an old black frock and shabby boots. I could have run away. I was perfectly capable of it. But I stayed looking up at him and--in the end it was HE who went away and it was I who stayed."

"Consciously?" I murmured.

"Consciously? You may just as well ask my shadow that lay so still by me on the young grass in that morning sunshine.  I never knew before how still I could keep.  It wasn't the stillness of terror. I remained, knowing perfectly well that if I ran he was not the man to run after me.  I remember perfectly his deep-toned, politely indifferent 'Restez donc.'  He was mistaken.  Already then I hadn't the slightest intention to move.  And if you ask me again how far conscious all this was the nearest answer I can make you is this: that I remained on purpose, but I didn't know for what purpose I remained.  Really, that couldn't be expected. . . . Why do you sigh like this?  Would you have preferred me to be idiotically innocent or abominably wise?"

"These are not the questions that trouble me," I said. "If I sighed it is because I am weary."

"And getting stiff, too, I should say, in this Pompeiian armchair. You had better get out of it and sit on this couch as you always used to do. That, at any rate, is not Pompeiian.  You have been growing of late extremely formal, I don't know why.  If it is a pose then for goodness' sake drop it.  Are you going to model yourself on