An accidental discovery made me her chief friend, among the men: it turned out that her childhood had been passed, where my childhood had been passed, at Shedfield Heath, in Buckinghamshire.

She was never weary of consulting my boyish recollections, and comparing them with her own.

'I love the place,' she used to say; 'the only happy time of my life was the time passed there.' On my sacred word of honour, this was the sort of talk that passed between us, for week after week.

What other talk could pass between a man whose one and twentieth birthday was then near at hand, and a woman who was close on forty?
What could I do, when the poor, broken, disappointed creature met me on the hill or by the river, and said, 'You are going out for a walk; may I come with you ?' I never attempted to intrude myself into her confidence; I never even asked her why she had joined the Community.

You see what is coming, don't you?
_I_ never saw it.