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He observed her dejection one day, when he had casually mentioned something to her about pastoral life in ancient Greece. She was gathering the buds called `lords and ladies' from the bank while he spoke. ¡¡¡¡`Why do you look so woebegone all of a sudden?' he asked. ¡¡¡¡`Oh, 'tis only - about my own self,' she said, with a frail laugh of sadness, fitfully beginning to peel `a lady' meanwhile. `Just a sense of what might have been with me! My life looks as if it had been wasted for want of chances! When I see what you know, what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am! I'm like the poor Queen of Sheba who lived in the Bible. There is no more spirit in me.' ¡¡¡¡`Bless my soul, don't go troubling about that! Why,' he said with some enthusiasm, `I should be only too glad, my dear Tess, to help you to anything in the way of history, or any line of reading you would like to take up--'