THE W1NDOWlodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for theyhad reached the orchard. And with a painfuleffort of concentration, she focused her mind,not upon the silver—bossed bark of the tree, orupon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantomkitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables,grained and knotted, whose virtue seems tohave been laid bare by years of muscular integrity,which stuck there, its four legs in air. Naturally,if 0ne’s days were passed in this seeing of angularessences, this reducing of lovely evenings, withall their Hamingo clouds and blue and silver to awhite deal four—legged table (and it was a markof the finest minds so to do), naturally one couldnot be judged like an ordinary person.

Mr. Bankes liked her for bidding him “ thinkof his work ". He had thought of it, often andoften. Times without number, he had said,“ Ramsay is one of those men who do their bestwork before they are forty ". He had madea definite contribution to philosophy in one littlebook when he was only five and twenty; whatcame after was more or less amplification, repetition. But the number of men. who make adefinite contribution to anything whatsoever isvery small, he said, pausing by the pear tree, wellbrushed, scrupulously exact, exquisitely judicial.Suddenly, as if the movement of his hand had