They'd be sure to know." Christopher laughed the laugh of the scornful.

"I say, you are a duffer to suppose that clever men like schoolmasters bother their heads about such rot as the colour of a woman's hair." "Of course, I know they wouldn't about a woman's," Elisabeth hastened to justify herself; "but I thought perhaps they might about a goddess's." "It is the same thing.

You've no idea what tremendously clever chaps schoolmasters are--much too clever to take any interest in girls' and women's concerns.

Besides, they are too old for that, too--they are generally quite thirty." Elisabeth was silent for a moment; and Christopher whistled as he looked across the green valley to the sunset, without in the least knowing how beautiful it was.

But Elisabeth knew, for she possessed an innate knowledge of many things which he would have to learn by experience.