'Well, what does this mean, my dear girl?' he asked.
Her inner mirth escaping in spite of her she turned askance and said: 'When you was following me to Street o' Wells, two hours ago, I looked round and saw you, and huddied behind a stone! You passed and brushed my frock without seeing me. And when, on my way backalong, I saw you waiting hereabout again, I slipped over the wall, and ran past you! If I had not stopped and looked round at 'ee, you would never have catched me!'
'What did you do that for, you elf!'
'That you shouldn't find me.'
'That's not exactly a reason. Give another, dear Avice,' he said, as he turned and walked beside her homeward.
She hesitated. 'Come!' he urged again.
''Twas because I thought you wanted to be my young man,' she answered.
'What a wild thought of yours! Supposing I did, wouldn't you have me?'
'Not now.... And not for long, even if it had been sooner than now.'
'Why?'
'If I tell you, you won't laugh at me or let anybody else know?'
'Never.'
'Then I will tell you,' she said quite seriously. ''Tis because I get tired o' my lovers as soon as I get to know them well. What I see in one young man for a while soon leaves him and goes into another yonder, and I follow, and then what I admire fades out of him and springs up somewhere else; and so I follow on, and never fix to one. I have loved FIFTEEN a'ready! Yes, fifteen, I am almost ashamed to say,' she repeated, laughing. 'I can't help it, sir, I assure you. Of course it is really, to ME, the same one all through, on'y I can't catch him!' She added anxiously, 'You won't tell anybody o' this in me, will you, sir? Because if it were known I am afraid no man would like me.'
Pierston was surprised into stillness. Here was this obscure and almost illiterate girl engaged in the pursuit of the impossible ideal, just as he had been himself doing for the last twenty years. She was doing it quite involuntarily, by sheer necessity of her organization, puzzled all the while at her own instinct. He suddenly thought of its bearing upon himself, and said, with a sinking heart-'Am I--one of them?'
She pondered critically.
'You was; for a week; when I first saw you.'
'Only a week?'
'About that.'
'What made the being of your fancy forsake my form and go elsewhere?'