Page:The Wheel of Time, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/72

64  her knowledge. But as he walked home across the park, through Kensington Gardens, he felt it impossible to believe in her ignorance.

 V

the end of a month he broke out to her. "I can't get over it, it's so extraordinary—the difference between your youth and your maturity!"

"Did you expect me to be an eternal child?" Mrs. Tregent asked, composedly.

"No, it isn't that." He stopped—it would be difficult to explain.

"What is it, then?" she inquired, with her systematic refusal to acknowledge a complication. There was always, to Maurice Glanvil's ear, in her impenetrability to allusion, the faintest, softest glee, and it gave her on this occasion the appearance of recognizing his difficulty and being amused at it. She would be excusable to be a little cold-blooded. He really knew, however, that the penalty was all in his own reflections, for it had not taken him even a