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 I see what you know, what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am! I’m like the poor Queen of Sheba who lived in the Bible. There is no more spirit in me.’

‘Bless my soul, don’t go troubling about that! Why,’ he said, with some enthusiasm, ‘I should be only too glad, my dear Tess, to help you to anything in the way of history, or any line of reading you would like to take up’

‘It is a lady again,’ interrupted she, holding out the bud she had peeled.

‘What?’

‘I meant that there are always more ladies than lords when you come to peel them.’

‘Never mind about the lords and ladies. Would you like to take up any course of study—history, for example?’

‘Well, sometimes I feel I don’t want to know anything more about it than I know already.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because what’s the use of learning that I am one of a long row only—finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that’s all. The best is not to