His own eyes plunged once more into the green-shadowed depths of that midsummer nosegay. Its pale primroses seemed to sway, in the wind, over their crumpled leaves, as they would have done where she had actually picked them among the wood-rubble and the fungus-growths of their birthplace. The moist bluebell-stalks, so full of liquid greenness beneath their heavy blooms, seemed to carry his mind straight into the hazel-darkened spaces where she had found them. These also belonged to the embarrassment of that figure beside him. These also, with the cool greenery of the sturdy campions, were the very secret of that “next moment,” which floated now, with the mocking sun-motes, untouched and virginal in the air about them.

Wolf knew well enough the peculiar limitations of his own nature. He knew well enough that any great surge of what is called “passion” was as impossible to him as was any real remorse about making love. What he felt was an excitement that trembled on the margin⁠—on the fluctuating fine edge⁠—between amorous desire for the slim frame of this mysterious girl and the thrilling attraction of unexplored regions in her soul.