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 years, and you've kept this spark of the divine fire all to yourself."

Keble smiled with a mixture of affection and faint bitterness. "I didn't exactly keep her, old girl. There's no reason why you and Mother shouldn't have got yourself ignited before this."

Alice considered. "But we did ask her to come to us."

"There are ways and ways of asking. Do you suppose she can't feel the difference?"

Again Alice reflected. "You mean, I suppose, that if you had married Girlie, for instance, we would have commanded her presence, on pain of dragging her out of her lair."

"I'm glad you see it."

"Well, dear, wasn't it just a bit your fault?"

"No doubt."

"I mean, how were we to know what an original creature you had found out here? It isn't reasonable; there can't be another. We had nothing to go on but your laconic sketch,—'wild flowers', I remember, was your most enthusiastic description. But there are wild flowers and wild flowers, you know,—just as there are 'ways and ways of asking'. There were gaps and contradictions in your accounts, and the burden of proof rested on you. We didn't desire to place you in a false position. Even Claudia Windrom reported that Louise's tastes were very western. I might have known that she was prejudiced, and we certainly ought to have given you more