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Rh foreign tongue, the meaning of which he but dimly conjectures. And this impatience quenched the momentary impulse she had felt to tell Maud, anyhow, what she had done, what she was doing, what she intended to do. And the impulse fainter than this—to abandon her design, or rather to think about abandoning it—went out like a candle in a high wind; a puff, and it was dark night again.

She scooped up the dry, hot sand, and once more let it trickle through her fingers.

"Oh, one way of love and another way of love, as Browning tells us," she said quickly, "and another, and yet another. We're all different, and all our ways of love are different, just as our manner of drinking our tea is different, which reminds me that it must be tea-time. Wouldn't it be dull if we were all alike? You want to love to slow music, you know, and I want to love to—to a cake-walk."

She paused just a moment, and became thoroughly content with herself; distant mountains were gone, and there was no far-off starlight any more.

"Oh, Maud!" she said, getting up, "and what of It—Him—Lord Brayton? I've seen him again, by the way. Somebody died, and he is Aunt Cathie's landlord, and I think he's delightful. He came to lunch one day, and we talked about Aims and Objects of Existence—all with enormous capital letters. Do you still want to grab pleasures, and give them him? What complications in your plan! If there's a pleasure lying about and you grab it, and he wants it rather, and I want it rather more, to which of us will you give it? If you say you will give it him, I shall never speak to you again."

Intimate as Maud was with Lucia, she felt she could not explain.

"You don't understand," she said quietly. "Things don't happen like that."

Again Lucia felt the degradation of her level, and again that made her impatient and incredulous of the reality of the other level. She spoke daringly, but with calculation.

"But I really want to know," she said. "Oh, Maud, look at that fishing-boat with the red sail against the grey of the sea. Suppose Lord Brayton liked me better than you, would you ever forgive me?"

The daring of this was justified. To Maud's transparent mind the case necessarily became a purely imaginary one, otherwise Lucia could never have spoken of it.