He got down on his knees, plunged his hands into the water, like a golden net-work in the afternoon light, washed his hands well, and returned to Lucina.

She laid her little hand in his, but she shook her head, smiling.

"I liked it better the other way," said she.
"I couldn't touch your hand with mine like that." "You would give me more if you let me give you something sometimes," said Lucina, with a pretty, sphinx-like look at him as she drew her hand away.
Jerome wondered what she had meant after they had separated.

Acute as he was, and of more masterly mind than she, he was at a loss, for she had touched that fixed idea which sways us all to greater or less degree and some to delusion.

Jerome, with his one principle of giving, could not even grasp a problem which involved taking.
He puzzled much over it, then decided, not with that lenient slighting, as in other cases when womankind had vexed him with blind words, but with a fond reverence, as for some angelic mystery, that it was because Lucina was a girl.