The effect of this restriction, made obviously at the behest of some deep passion, was to make him suddenly sinister.  They gazed at him as though he had revealed that he carried arms.  But Ellen remembered business again.

“Those letters,” she reminded Mr. Philip, “had I not better read them over before Mr. Yaverland goes?”

Yaverland caught his breath, then spoke off-handedly.  “You’re forgetting.  They don’t speak Spanish in Brazil, but Portuguese.”  And added confidentially, “Of course you were thinking of the Argentine.”

She was as hurt by the revelation of this vast breach in her omniscience as the bright twang of knowingness in her voice had told him she would be.

“Yes,” she said unsteadily, “I was thinking of the Argentine.”

He shook hands with Mr. Philip, and she took him down the corridor to the door.  She blinked back her tears as he stood at the head of the stair and put up his collar with those strange hands that were speckled like a snake’s belly, for it seemed a waste, like staying indoors when the menagerie procession is going round the town, to let anything so unusual go away without seeing as much of it as possible.  Then she remembered the thing that she had wanted to say in the other room, and wondered if it would be bold to speak, and finally remarked in a voice disagreeable with shyness, “The people up on the Pentland Hills use that word you said was in Shakespeare.  Snow-broth.  When the hill-streams run full after the melting of the snows, that’s snow-broth.”

He liked women who were interested in queer-shaped fragments of fact, for they reminded him of his mother.  He took pains to become animated at her news.

“They do, they do!” Ellen assured him, pleased by his response.  “And they say ‘hit’ for ‘it,’ which is Anglo-Saxon.”

He noticed that her overall, which she was growing out of, fitted tightly on her over-thin shoulders and showed how their line was spoilt by the deep dip of the clavicle, and wondered why that imperfection should make her more real to him than she had been when he had thought her wholly beautiful.  Again he became aware of her discontent with her surroundings, which had exerted on her personality nothing of the weakening effect of despair, since it sprang from such a rich content with the universe, such a confident faith that the supremest beauty she could imagine existed somewhere and would satisfy her if only she could get at it.  He said, with no motive but to confirm her belief that the world was full of interest, “You must go on with your Spanish, you know.  Don’t just treat it as a commercial language.  There’s a lot of fine stuff in Spanish literature.”  He hesitated, feeling uncertain as to whether “Celestina” or “Juan de Ruiz” were really suitable for a young girl.  “Saint Teresa, you know,” he suggested, with the air of one who had landed on his feet.

“Oh, I can’t do with religion,” said Ellen positively.