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'Than what?' Macmaster asked.

'I'm thinking,' Tietjens said, 'thinking how not to be too rude.'

'You want to be rude,' Macmaster said bitterly, 'to people who lead the contemplative...the circumspect life.'

'It's precisely that,' Tietjens said. He quoted.

'"She walks, the lady of my delight,

A shepherdess of sheep;

She is so circumspect and right:

She has her thoughts to keep."'

Macmaster said:

'Confound you, Chrissie. You know everything.'

'Well, yes,' Tietjens said musingly, 'I think I should want to be rude to her. I don't say I should be. Certainly I shouldn't if she were good looking. Or if she were your soul's dimity. You can rely on that.'

Macmaster had a sudden vision of Tietjens' large and clumsy form walking beside the lady of his, Macmaster's, delight, when ultimately she was found--walking along the top of a cliff amongst tall grass and poppies and making himself extremely agreeable with talk of Tasso and Cimabue. All the same, Macmaster imagined, the lady wouldn't like Tietjens. Women didn't, as a rule. His looks and his silences alarmed them. Or they hated him...Or they liked him very much indeed. And Macmaster said conciliatorily: