11

grateful.

Mat afternoon Alder turned up at the market place where he was satisfied. He himself judged my sleuthing, somewhere below in the form; but he was always in the Alhamra hill. Mal first day they asked him to tea, in me of the little tea-worries near the Alhamra; afterward he told me the way to the up with them to the Generalife. His seems shyness in Hal's presence persisted, or at any rate, his reserve. For she was never, there or afterwards, one if he were shy or mere in indifferent, any more than she could decide if he were a old. She owed baref remember,

when he was out of sight, what he looked like. There was something shadowy and indefinite about his whole person. His dullish sandy hair merged into the colour of his skin, and his thin lips were of the same tint as his small unkempt moustache. Halo would have said that there was nothing individual about him if his pale, opaque eyes, between their pale lashes, had not now and then turned to steel-colour, when anything excited or interested him. She had seen straw-coloured sand-coloured people before, but never any one whom protective mimicry seemed to have provided with so complete a neutrality of tint. His manner also was neutral, if anything could be called a manner which seemed rather a resigned endurance of human inpingements. Judging from Mr. Alders's attitude one would have supposed that his own aim was to avoid his fellow beings; but this shrinking exterior concealed a consuming sociability.