There are many ways of achieving distinction, but few are more effectual than a steady habit of punctuality. By this you may shine even in the appalling gloom of the underground railway. Among all the women who wait every morning for the City trains at Gower Street Station, there was none more conspicuously punctual than Miss Flossie Walker. The early clerk who travelled citywards was always sure of seeing that little figure on the same spot at the same moment, provided he himself were punctual and kept a sharp look-out. This you may be sure he took good care to do. To look at Flossie once was to look again and yet again. And he was fortunate indeed if his route lay between Moorgate Street Station and the Bank, for then he had the pleasure of seeing her sharply threading her way among the traffic, if that can be said of anything so soft and round as Flossie.
If Flossie's figure was small and round, her face was somewhat large, a perfect oval moulded in the subtlest curves, smooth and white moreover, with a tinge of ivory sallow towards the roots of her black hair. Wonderful hair was Flossie's. In those days she parted it in the middle and waved it symmetrically on either side of her low forehead; she brought it over her ears, covering all but the tips and the delicate pink lobes; she coiled it at the back in an elaborate spiral and twisted it into innumerable little curls about the nape of her neck. Unfortunately that neck was rather short; but she wore low collars which made the most of it. And then Flossie's features were so very correct. She had a correct little nose, neither straight nor aquiline, but a distracting mixture of both, and a correct little mouth, so correct and so small that you wondered how it managed to display so many white teeth in one diminutive smile. Flossie's eyes were not as her mouth; they were large, full-lidded, long-lashed, and blacker than her hair. No wonder if the poor clerk who passed her on her way to and fro in the City rejoiced as they looked up at him. She might be going to her work as he to his, but what with her bright eyes and her blue ribbons, she looked the very genius of holiday as she went.
At first she was a little subdued and awed by the Bank, and by her own position in it. But when this feeling wore off, the plump girl rolled into her place with a delicious abandonment. Flossie was one of fifty girls who sat, row after row, at long flat desks covered with green cloth. A soft monotonous light was reflected from the cream-coloured walls against which Flossie's head stood out with striking effect, like some modern study in black and morbid white. You would have picked her out among the fifty at once. Hers was the lightest of light labour, the delicate handling of thousands of cancelled notes—airy, insubstantial things, as it were the ghosts of bank-notes, released from the gross conditions of the currency. Towards the middle of the morning Flossie would be immersed in a pale agitated sea of bank-notes. The air would be full of light sounds, always the sharp brisk rustling of the notes, and now and then a human undertone, or towards lunch time, a breath that was like a sigh. A place to grow light-headed in if you began to think about it. Happily no thought was required beyond the intelligence that lives in sensitive finger-tips. It was almost mechanical labour, and for that Flossie had more than a taste, she had a positive genius. It was mechanical labour idealized and reduced to a fine art, an art in which the personality of the artist counted. The work displayed to perfection the prettiness of Flossie's hands, from the rapid play of her fingers in sifting, and their little fluttering, hovering movements in arranging, to the exquisitely soft touches of the palms when she gathered all her sheaves of notes into one sheaf, shaking, caressing, coaxing the rough edges into line. Flossie worked with the rhythm and precision of a machine; and yet humanly, self-consciously, almost coquettishly, as under the master's eye.
But all this was of yesterday. To-day Flossie was different. She was not quite so precise, so punctual as she had been. Something had gone wrong with the bright little mechanism. It worked erratically, now under protest, and now with spurts of terrifying activity. The fine fly-wheels of thought had set off whirring on their own account and had got mixed up with the rest of the machinery. Flossie had begun to philosophise, to annoy destiny with questions. There was time for that in the afternoon when the worst of the sorting was done. She was in the stage of doubt so attractive in philosophers and women, asking herself: Is knowledge possible? And if so, what do I know? She was aware that there are certain insurpassable limits to human knowledge; all the same, woman-like, she raised herself on tip-toe, and tried to peep over the boundaries. What did she know? She knew that somebody pitied her, because, poor little woman, she had to earn her own living like a man. Well, she would not have to do that if he—if he—Yes, and if he didn't? And how was she to know? And yet, and yet she had an idea. Anybody may have an idea. Then the long desks became the green tables where Flossie gambled with fate; trying—trying—trying to force the invisible hand.
For with Flossie it was spring-time too. Under the little clerk's correctness and demureness there ran and mingled with her blood the warm undercurrent of a dream. The dream had come to her many springs ago; and as Flossie grew plumper and rosier it grew plump and rosy too. To be married (to a person hitherto unspecified in fancy, whose features remained a blur or a blank), to be the mistress of a dear little house (the house stood out very clear in Flossie's fancy), and the mother of a dear little girl (a figure ever present to her, complete in socks and shoes and all the delicious details of its dress). Compared with that vision of Flossie's, no dream was ever so soft, so rosy and so young.
And now in the Spring-time all her being moved softly under the current of the dream. Flossie's fancy did not associate it consciously with Keith Rickman (she would have blushed if the association had been made apparent to her); the Spring did that for her, mingling with her blood.
Meanwhile, as Flossie dreamed, the same hour every week-day morning Rickman was awakened by the same sounds, the click of the door-latch in the bedroom overhead and the patter of a girl's feet on the stairs. He knew it was Miss Flossie Walker going down to early breakfast. And when he heard it, he turned in his bed on the side farthest from the window and sighed. Such a deep unhappy sigh.
Lucia had delivered him from Lucia, but there were other troubles from which she could not save him. Not, in the warm spring days, from the newly awakened trouble of his youth; not, in the sleepless summer nights, from the brief but recurrent tyranny of sense, and not from the incessant hunger of the heart. Though it was she who had created that hunger in him, it was not (at five and twenty) to be satisfied by the mere image of her, however vividly present to him. He was only five and twenty, and the spring had come with its piercing sweetness, its irresistible delicate lure, to the great stirring, melting, and unbinding of his manhood. He could be faithful to Lucia for ever in his soul; but there were moments in this season when he was aware of a distinct cleavage between his soul and his senses.
It seemed to him that Miss Flossie Walker lay in wait for him in just those moments, with the secret but infallible instinct of the creatures whom the Spring touches to its own uses. He could not blame her. Flossie was innocent, being but the unconscious handmaid of the Spring.
It was not because Lucia was forever absent and Flossie forever on the spot. At first he was unaware of the danger that lurked for him in Flossie's ways, because his soul in its love for Lucia was so utterly secure. At first the sighs were all on Flossie's account; poor Flossie, who had to be up so early while he settled himself for another luxurious slumber. At first he only pitied Flossie. He thought of her at odd moments as a poor little girl (rather pretty) who worked too hard and never had any fun to speak of; but the rest of the time he never thought of her at all.
And in the early days of their acquaintance, Miss Flossie Walker (then only an apprentice to a firm of type-writers in Holborn) was very much to be pitied. He could remember how she had come (a little while before that memorable Bank holiday) to Mrs. Downey's boarding-house, a plump but rather anaemic maiden, black-haired, and demure. He had begun by talking to her at table, because she sat next to him, and he had ended, if there ever is an end to these things, by taking her to matinées, picture-galleries, restaurants, and the British Museum. The girl was so young, so confiding, and so obviously respectable, that he was careful to keep to the most guileless of middle-class entertainments. A few weeks of this existence brought shy smiles and a lively play of dimples on Flossie's face. She grew plumper still, less anaemic, though hardly less demure. A few months, and Flossie's beauty flowered and expanded, she began to dress as became it, entering into rivalry with Miss Ada Bishop, until it dawned on him that Flossie was really, in her own place and way, a very engaging little creature.
About this time Flossie's circumstances had improved as much as her appearance. Her father had been a clerk in the Bank of England, and on his death she obtained a post there as a sorter. That position gave Flossie both dignity and independence; it meant light work and hours which brought hope with them every day towards three o'clock. Under these circumstances Flossie's beauty went on flowering and expanding, till she became more than ever a thing of danger and disaster.
Her intimacy with Mr. Rickman, which had lapsed lately, owing to his increasing passion for solitude and separation, revived suddenly in the spring of ninety-five. It happened in this manner. With the spring, Mrs. Downey's was once more agitated by the hope of the Bank holiday, and Mr. Spinks inquired of Rickman if he were going out of town for Easter. (Rickman was incautiously dining that evening at the general table.) But Rickman wasn't going out of town. He said he thought of going somewhere up the river. He had also thought, though he did not say so, that in fulfilment of an ancient promise he would take Miss Flossie to the play on Saturday afternoon. Yet when it came to the point he had some diffidence in asking her. She might not think it proper.
It was Mr. Soper who precipitated his resolve. He wanted to know if Rickman had made up a party for the River, and 'ad any companion?
No. He hadn't made up a party. Thanks, awfully. He was going by Himself.
Mr. Soper didn't think now that was a very enjoyable way of spendin' a Bank holiday.
He put it that if it was Rickman's intention to hire a row-boat, it wouldn't be at all a bad idea if he, Soper, and Mr. Spinks, say, were to join.
As Soper's incredible suggestion sank into him, the expression of Rickman's face was pitiable to see. It was then that casually, as if the idea had only just occurred to him, he wondered whether Miss Walker would by any chance care for a matinée ticket for the play? He was anxious to give his offer an uncertain and impromptu character, suggesting that Miss Walker must be torn between her many engagements, and have matinée tickets in large numbers up the sleeve of her charming blouse.
Flossie was so shy that when you spoke to her she never answered all at once; so shy that when she spoke to you she never turned her head to look at you, but left you to judge of the effect you made on her by the corners of her mouth and eyes. So now he had to look very carefully at her to see whether she were saying yes or no. Casually again (as if this course were not necessarily involved in acceptance) he inquired whether he might have the pleasure of taking her.
Miss Bishop looked another way. Her loose mouth hung desirous. (Miss Bishop's face was flagrantly frank, devoid of all repose. None of these people had any repose about them except Flossie.) Flossie was dubious and demure. Was he quite sure it was a pleasure? He protested that in a world where few things were certain, that, at any rate, admitted of no doubt. Flossie deliberated whether this further step were or were not a departure from her ideal of propriety. And it was not until he showed signs of retracting his proposal that she intimated her consent. But as for pleasure, if Flossie were pleased she did not allow it to appear. And although her heart beat excitedly under her blue blouse, it was on the side that was not next to Mr. Rickman.
Then Miss Roots began to talk of incomprehensible things excitedly. So excitedly, that she had, for the moment, quite a colour. And while they talked, all the other boarders turned in their places and watched Mr. Rickman as if he had been some wonderful enchanter; Mr. Soper alone emphasizing by an attitude his entire aloofness from the general interest.
And all the time Miss Roots was talking, Flossie, without saying a word, contrived to seize upon the disengaged portion of his mind. He wondered what she was thinking about.
She was thinking, first, that it really paid to put on your best blouse every evening. Next, that it wasn't worth while if he would keep on talking to the lady on his right. Then that she couldn't decide the point until she knew where he was going on Sunday.
That she never knew; but she went to the play with him on Saturday, and on many Saturdays after that. There was nobody so gay that spring as Flossie.
Coming fresh to Flossie after a long estrangement, Rickman couldn't recognize her from his old account of her as a poor little girl who worked too hard and never had any fun to speak of. In so describing her, no doubt he had been influenced by the melancholy of his earlier mood. But there were other reasons why he still insisted on regarding her in this pathetic light. It provided him with several very agreeable sensations, and the most agreeable of all was the voluptuous passion of pity. It kept him detached, always in the superior position of a benefactor. Benefactor, indeed! He was in a fair way of becoming Flossie's deity, her Providence, the mystic source of theatre-tickets and joy. No really brave man ever shrinks from the dangers of apotheosis, when the process involves no loss of personal dignity. And apart from the gratification of his natural healthy vanity, Rickman's heart was touched by the thought that the little thing turned to him instinctively for all her innocent pleasures.
Then all at once the innocent pleasures ceased. They ceased just as Flossie's palpitating heart told her that she was really making an impression on this singularly unimpressionable young man. She knew it by the sudden softening of his voice as he spoke to her, by the curious brilliant dilation of his eyes as they followed her about the room. For after much easy practice on Mr. Spinks she knew precisely by what movements and what glances she could best produce these interesting effects. And yet nothing could be farther from Flossie's fancy than flirtation. The little clerk was nothing if not practical, even under the tender impulse of her dream.
Flossie was determined that whatever else she failed in she would not fail in her woman's trade. She would have considered herself disgraced by such bankruptcy. Not that she feared it. Nature had started her with a sufficient capital of fascination, and at Mrs. Downey's she had, so to speak, established a connection. And now it seemed there had come a period of depression. It still rained tickets, more tickets than ever, but there was no Mr. Rickman to escort her to the concert or the play; Mr. Rickman always had another engagement, never specified. No Mr. Rickman to take her into the suburbs on a Sunday; Mr. Rickman was off, goodness knew where, scouring the country on his bicycle. No Mr. Rickman to talk to her at dinner; Mr. Rickman took all his meals in his own room now. For these and all other delinquencies his invariable excuse was that he was busy; and Flossie, mind you, was sharp enough to see throughthat.
No. Mr. Rickman had changed, suddenly, unaccountably, without a moment's warning. First of all, the other boarders noticed that he had become most frightfully irritable in his temper. He had not been over polite to any of them lately, but to her he was insufferably rude, most ungentlemanly, she called it. He would pretend not to see her if by any chance she looked his way, not to hear her if by any chance she spoke to him. Once (they were quite alone) he had broken off in the middle of an exciting conversation and rushed out of the room, out of the house. She saw him over the balcony railings, walking up and down the street like a lunatic, with his hands thrust down into his pockets and no hat on. And he was not only ungentlemanly but positively unkind. If they met on the stairs (somehow they did this very often) he would draw himself up flat against the wall as if he was afraid of the frill of her dress touching him. If she came into the drawing-room he would walk out of it; or if he stayed, it was only to sit staring at her (poor innocent little Flossie, who was so pretty) with an ugly scowl on his face. There were times when poor innocent little Flossie said to herself that she positively believed he hated her. And she was so innocent that she couldn't think what she had done to make him hate her.
She was right about the hatred. An indignant anger was certainly what he felt when he first realized that she had power to make him feel at all. Her prettiness tormented him; therefore he hated her, and everything about her. He hated the sound of her little tongue upraised among the boarders, and of her little feet running up and down the stairs. He hated every glance of her black eyes and every attitude and movement of her plump little body. More than all he hated the touch of her soft arms as they stirred against him at the tightly packed dinner-table. Therefore he avoided the dinner-table, and the drawing-room; he avoided as far as possible the house, filled as it was with the disastrous presence. He fatigued himself with excesses of walking and cycling, in the hope that when he flung himself into his bed at midnight he would be too tired to feel. And sometimes he was.
At last poor Flossie, weary of conjecture, unbent so far as to seek counsel of Miss Bishop. For Miss Bishop gave you to understand that on the subject of "gentlemen" there was nothing that she did not know. It was a little humiliating, for only a month ago Flossie had said to her in strictest confidence, "I feel it in my bones, Ada, that he's going to come forward this spring."
Ada laughed coarsely, but not unkindly, at the tale of her perplexity. Ada had every reason to be sympathetic; for Mr. Rickman once securely attached, Mr. Spinks would be lonely, unappropriated, free. "Don't you worry," said she, "he'sall right."
"All right? Can't you see how frightfully rude he is to me?"
"I should think I did see it. A jolly lot you know about gentlemen. You've nothing to go on when they're so everlastingly polite, but when they turn mad like that all of a sudden, you may be sure they're coming to the point. To tell you the truth, I didn't use to think you'd very much chance, Flossie; but when I saw him walk out of the room the other day, I said to myself, 'She's got 'im!'"
"I wish I knew. I don't want it hanging on for ever."
"It won't. If he doesn't propose in May, he will in June, when you've got a new dress and a new hat."
Flossie shook her head despairingly. "I wonder," said she, "what I'd really better do. I think sometimes I'd better go away."
"Well, sometimes thatdoesfetch them; and then, again, sometimes it doesn't. It's risky. Some girls," she added reflectively, "try doing their hair another way; but I wouldn't, if I was you. That's risky, too. If they're really fond of you, as often as not it only puts them off."
"Then whatamI to do?"
"If you take my advice," said Miss Bishop, "you'll not do anything. You'll just go on the same as before, as if you hadn't noticed anything out of the way."
And Flossie went on just the same as before, with the result that every morning Mr. Rickman sighed more and more heavily as he heard the early patter of those feet upon the floor.
Flossie had been working with one eye on the clock all afternoon. At the closing hour she went out into Lothbury with the other girls; but instead of going up Moorgate Street as usual, she turned out of Prince's Street to her right, and thence made her way westward as quickly as she could for the crowd. It was September, a day when it was good to be out of doors at that hour. The sunlight filtered into the dusty thoroughfare from the west, on her left the sprawling mounted legends over the shops were so many gold blazons on an endless field of grey; on her right, a little way ahead, the tall plane-tree in Wood Street hung out its green leaves over Cheapside like a signal. Thither Flossie was bound.
As she sidled out of the throng into the quiet little lane, Mr. Rickman came forward, raising his hat. He had been waiting under the plane-tree for twenty minutes, and was now beguiling his sylvan solitude with a cigarette. Two years had worked a considerable change in his appearance. His face had grown graver and clearer cut. He had lost his hectic look and had more the air of a man of the world than of a young poet about town. To Flossie's admiration and delight he wore an irreproachable frock-coat and shining linen; she interpreted these changes as corresponding with the improvement in his prospects, and judged that the profession of literature was answering fairly well.
They shook hands seriously, as if they attached importance to these trifles. "Am I dreadfully late?" she asked.
"Dreadfully." He smiled with one corner of his mouth, holding his cigarette firmly in the other, while he took from her the little cape she carried over her arm.
"I expect I've kept you waiting a good bit?" A keen observer of Flossie's face might have detected in it a faintly triumphant appreciation of the fact. "I'm awfully sorry I got behind-hand and had to stay till I'd finished up."
"Never mind, Flossie, it don't matter. At any rate it's worth it." The words implied that Mr. Rickman's time was valuable, otherwise he would not have given it to Flossie. "Where shall we go, and what shall we do?"
"I don't much care."
"Shall we have tea somewhere while we're making up our minds?"
"Well—I wouldn't mind. I hadn't time to get any at the Bank."
"All right. Come along." And they plunged into Cheapside again, he breasting the stream, making a passage for her. They found a favourite confectioner's in St. Paul's Churchyard, where they had sometimes gone before. He noticed that she took her seat with rather a weary air.
"Floss, you must come for a walk on the Embankment. You look as if you didn't get out enough. Why will you go up and down in that abominable underground? You're awfully white, you know."
"I never had a red face."
"Then what's the matter?"
"Nothing, I shall be better when I've had my tea."
She had her tea, which after a proper protest on her part was paid for by Rickman. Then they turned into the cathedral gardens, where it was still pleasant under the trees. Thus approached from the north-east, the building rose up before them in detached incoherent masses, the curve of its great dome broken by the line of the north transept seen obliquely from below. It turned a forbidding face citywards, a face of sallow stone blackened by immemorial grime, while the north-west columns of the portico shone almost white against the nearer gloom.
"It's clever of it to look so beautiful," murmured Rickman, "when it's so infernally ugly." He stood for a few minutes, lost in admiration of its eccentricity. Thus interested, he was not aware that his own expression had grown somewhat abstracted, impersonal and cold.
"I call that silly," said Flossie, looking at him out of the corner of her black eyes. Had he come there to pay attention—to the Cathedral?
"Do you? Why?"
"Because—I suppose you wouldn't say I was beautiful if I were—well, downright ugly?"
"I might, Flossie, if your ugliness was as characteristic, as suggestive as this."
Flossie shrugged her shoulders (not, he thought, a pretty action in a lady with so short a neck). To her St. Paul's was about as beautiful as the Bank and infinitely less "suggestive." Mr. Rickman interpreted her apathy as fatigue and looked about for a lonely seat. They found one under the angle of the transept.
"Let's sit down here," he said; "better not exert ourselves violently so soon after tea."
"For all the tea I've had, it wouldn't matter," said Flossie as if resenting an ignoble implication. Rickman laughed a little uncomfortably and blushed. Perhaps she had hardly given him the right to concern himself with these intimate matters. Yet from the very first his feeling for Flossie had shown itself in minute cares for her physical well-being. They sat for a while in silence. A man passed them smoking; he turned his head to look back at the girl, and the flying ash from his cigarette lighted on her dress.
"Confound the brute!" said Rickman, trying to brush away the obnoxious powder with a touch which would have been more effectual if it had been less of a caress. She shivered slightly, and he put her cape gently about her shoulders. A curious garment, Flossie's cape, made of some thin grey-blue stuff, with gold braid on the collar, cheap, pretty and a little vulgar.
"There's not much warmth in that thing," he said, feeling it with his fingers.
"I don't want to be warm, thank you, a day like this," she retorted, pushing back the cape. For, though it was no longer spring, Flossie's dream tugged at her heartstrings. There was a dull anger against him in her heart. At that moment Flossie could have fought savagely for her dream.
What could have made her so irritable, poor little girl? She didn't look well; or—perhaps it was her work. He was sorry for all women who worked. And Flossie—she was such an utter woman. That touch of exaggeration in the curves of her soft figure made her irresistibly, superlatively feminine. To be sure, as he had hinted in that unguarded moment, her beauty was of the kind that suggests nothing more interesting than itself. Yet there were times when it had power over him, when he was helpless and stupid before it. And now, as he leaned back looking at her, his intellect seemed to melt away gradually and merge in dreamy sense. They sat for a while, still without speaking; then he suddenly bent forward, gazing into her eyes.
"What is it, Flossie? Tell me."
Flossie turned away her face from the excited face approaching it.
"Tell me."
"It's nothing. Can't you see I'm only tired. I've 'ad a hard day."
"I thought you never had hard days at the Bank?"
"No. No more we do—not to speak of."
"Then it's something you don't like to speak of. I say—have the other women been worrying you?"
"No, I should think not indeed. Catch any one trying that on with me!"
"Then I can't see what it can be."
"I daresay you can't. You don't know what it is! It's not much, but it's the same thing day after day, day after day, till I'm sick and tired of it all! I don't see any end to it either."
"I'm so sorry, Floss," said Rickman in a queer thick voice. She had turned her face towards him now, and its expression was inscrutable—to him. To another man it would have said that it was all very well for him to be sorry; he could put a stop to it soon enough if he liked.
"Oh—you needn't be sorry."
"Why not? Do you think I don't care?"
Immense play of expression on Flossie's face. She bit her lip; and that meant that he might care no end, or he mightn't care a rap, how was she to know? She smiled a bitter smile as much as to say that shedidn'tknow, neither did she greatly care. Then her lips quivered, which meant that if by any chance he did care, it was a cruel shame to leave a poor girl in the dark.
"Care? About the Bank?" she said at last. "You needn't. I shan't stand it much longer. I shall fling it up some of these days; see if I don't."
"Would that be wise?"
"I don't know whether it's wise or not. I know I can't go on like this for ever."
"Yes, but would anything else be better, or even half as good? You didn't get much fun out of that last place, you know."
"Well, for all the fun I get out of that old Bank, I might as well be in a ladies' boarding school. If I thought it would end in anything—but it won't."
"How do you know? It may end in your marrying a big fat manager."
"Don't be silly."
"Supposing you knew it would end some day, not necessarily in marrying the manager, would you mind going on with it?"
She looked away from him, and tears formed under her eyelashes, the vague light tears that never fall. "There's no use my talking of flinging it up. I'm fixed there for good."
"Who knows?" said Rickman; and if Flossie's eyes had been candid they would have said, "You ought to know, if anybody does." Whatever they said, it made him shudder, with fear, with shame, but no, not with hatred. "Poor Flossie," he said gently; and there was a pause during which Flossie looked more demure than ever after her little outburst. She had seen the look in his eyes that foreboded flight.
He rose abruptly. "Do you know, I'm awfully sorry, but I've got an appointment at half past five to meet a fellow in Fleet Street."
The fellow was Maddox, but the appointment, he had made it that very minute, which was the twenty-fifth minute past five.
They went their ways; he to Fleet Street, and she home. Maddox did not turn up to the appointment and Rickman had to keep it with himself. As the result of the interview he determined to try the effect of a little timely absence. He did not attempt to conceal from himself that he was really most Horribly afraid; his state of mind or rather body (for the disorder was purely physical) was such that he positively dared not remain in the same house with Flossie another day. What he needed was change of air and scene. He approached Mrs. Downey with a shame-faced air, and a tale of how he was seedy and thought if he could get away for a week it would set him up. It seemed to him that Mrs. Downey's manner conveyed the most perfect comprehension of his condition. He did not care; he was brought so low that he could almost have confided in Mrs. Downey. "Mark my words," said the wise woman to the drawing-room. "He'll be back again before the week's up." And as usual, little Flossie marked them.
He walked out to Hampstead that very evening and engaged rooms there by the week, on the understanding that he might require them for a month or more. He did not certainly know how long the cure would take.
Hampstead is a charming and salubrious suburb, and Jewdwine was really very decent to him while he was there, but in four days he had had more of the cure than he wanted. Or was it that he didn't want to be cured? Anyway a week was enough to prove that the flight to Hampstead was a mistake. He had now an opportunity of observing Miss Flossie from a judicious distance, with the result that her image was seen through a tender wash of atmosphere at the precise moment when it acquired relief. He began to miss her morning greetings, the soft touch of her hand when they said good-night, and the voice that seemed to be always saying, "How orf'ly good of you," "Thanks orf'ly, Mr. Rickman, I've had a lovely day." He hadn't given her many lovely days lately, poor little girl.
At the end of the week, coming up from Fleet Street, instead of making straight for the Hampstead Road as he ought to have done, he found himself turning aside in the direction of Tavistock Place. The excuse that he made to himself was that he wanted a book that he had left behind at Mrs. Downey's. Now it was not in the least likely that he had left it in the dining-room, nor yet in the drawing-room, but it was in those places that he thought of looking first. Not finding what he wanted, he went on dejectedly to the second floor, feeling that he must fulfil the quest that justified his presence. And there in his study, in, yes,init, as far in as anybody could get, by the bookcase next the window, Flossie was sitting; and sitting (if you could believe it) on the floor; sitting and moving her hands along the shelves as familiarly as you please. Good Heavens! if she wasn't busy dusting his books!
Flossie didn't see him, for she had her back to the door; and he stood there on the threshold for a second, just looking at her. She wore a loose dark-blue overall evidently intended to wrap her up and conceal her. But so far from concealing her, the overall, tucked in and smoothed out, and altogether adorably moulded by her crouching attitude, betrayed the full but tender outline of her body. Her face, all but the white curve of her cheek and forehead, was hidden from him, but he could see the ivory bistre at the nape of her bowed neck, with the delicate black tendrils of her curls clustering above it. Her throat, as she stooped over her task, was puckered and gathered, like some incredibly soft stuff, in little folds under her chin. He drew in his breath with a sighing sound which to Flossie was the first intimation of his presence.
To say that Flossie rose to her feet would be a misleading description of her method. She held on to the edge of a bookshelf by the tips of her fingers and drew herself up from the floor, slowly, as it were by some mysterious unfolding process, not ungraceful. She turned on him the wide half-mischievous, half-frightened eyes of a child caught this time in some superb enormity.
"Flossie," he said with an affectation of severity, "whathaveyou been doing?"
She produced her duster gingerly. "You can see," said she, "only I didn't mean you to catch me at it." She knelt down by the fireplace and gave her duster a little flick up the chimney. "I never, never in all my life saw such a lot of dust. I can't think how you've gone on living with it."
He smiled. "No more can I, Flossie. I don't know how I did it."
"Well, you haven't got to do it, now. It's all perfectly sweet and clean."
"It's all perfectly sweet, I know that, dear." She turned towards the door but not without a dissatisfied look back at the bookcase she had left. "Aren't you going to let me thank you?"
"You needn't. I was only helping Mrs. Downey."
"Oh—"
"She's been having a grand turn-out while you were away."
"The deuce she has—"
"Oh you needn't be frightened. Nobody's touched your precious books but me. I wouldn't let them."
"Why wouldn't you let them?"
"Be-cause—Oh, I say, it's six o'clock; are you going to stay?"
"Perhaps. Why?"
"Because I'd only one more shelf to dust and then I'd 'ave finished. I—I'm in rather a hurry."
"Why won't you stay and dust it now?"
"Well—you know—" She took one step inside the room timidly, then another, and stood still.
"Is it me you're afraid of? I'll sit outside, on the stairs, if you'd rather."
"How silly!" She removed an invisible atom of dust from a chair as she spoke, as much as to say she was inspired solely by the instinct of order.
The diminutive smile played about the corners of her mouth. "Miss Roots said I'd better not meddle with your books."
"Did she? Then Miss Roots is a beast."
"She seemed to think I didn't know how to dust them."
"Perhaps she's right. I say, suppose you let me see."
And Flossie, willingly cajoled, began again, and, as he saw with horror, on his hoarded relics of the Harden library. "No, Flossie," he said, with a queer change in his voice. "Not those." But Flossie's fingers moved along their tops with a delicacy born of the incessant manipulation of bank notes. All the same, she did do it wrong, for she dusted towards the backs instead of away from them. But he hadn't the heart to correct her. He watched a moment; then he pretended to be looking for the book he had pretended he wanted to find, then he sat down and pretended to write a letter whilst Flossie went on dusting, skilfully, delicately. She even managed to get through ten volumes of his own Bekker's Plato without damage to the beautiful but perishing Russia leather. That made it all the more singular that the back of the eleventh volume should come off suddenly with a rip.
She gave a little cry of dismay. He looked up, and she came to him holding the book in one hand and its back in the other. She really was a little frightened. "Look," she said, "I didn't think it would have gone and done like that."
"Oh, I say, Flossie—"
"I'm orf'ly sorry." Her mouth dropped, not unbecomingly; her eyes were so liquid that he could have sworn they had tears in them. She looked more than ever like an unhappy child, standing beside him in her long straight overall. "And I wouldn't let anybody look at them but me."
"Why wouldn't you? I've asked you that before, Flossie—why wouldn't you?" He took the book and its mutilated fragment from her, and held both her hands in his.
"Because I knew you were fond enough ofthem."
"And is there anything I wasn't fond enough of—do you think?"
"I don't think; I know."
"No, you know nothing, you know nothing at all about anything. Whatdidyou think?"
"I thought you hated me."
"Hated you?"
"Yes. Hated me like poison."
He put his arms about her, gathering her to him! He drew her head down over his heart. "I hate you like this—and this—and this," he said, kissing in turn her forehead, her eyelids and her mouth. He held her at arm's length and gazed at her as if he wondered whether they were the same woman, the Flossie he had once known, and this Flossie that he had kissed. Then he led her to the sofa, and drew her down by his side, and held her hands to keep her there. And yet he felt that it was he who was being led; he who was being drawn, he who was being held—over the brink of the immeasurable, inexpiable folly. In all this his genius remained alone and apart, unmoved by anything he did or said, as if it knew that through it all the golden chain still held.
Her mouth quivered. "If you didn't hate me, why were you so rude to me, then?" was the first thing she said.
"Because I loved you when I didn't want to love you, and it was more than I could stand. And because—because I didn't know it. Butyouknew it," he said almost savagely. It seemed to him that his tongue refused the guidance of his brain.
"I'm sure I didn't know anything of the sort." Her mouth quivered again; but this time it was with a smile.
"Why not? Because I didn't say so in a lot of stupid words? Youareliteral. But surely you understood? Not just at first, of course; I didn't care a bit at first; I didn't care till long after."
"Long after what?" Flossie was thinking of Miss Poppy Grace on the balcony next door.
"Never mind what."
Flossie knew all about Miss Poppy Grace, and she didn't mind at all.
"Would I be here now if I didn't love you?" He still had to persuade himself that this was love. It seemed incredible.
"Rubbish—you know you only came to look at those silly old books," said Flossie, nodding contemptuously towards the bookcase.
"Did you imagine I was in love with them? And think of all the things we've done together. Didn't you know? Didn't you feel it coming on?"
"I know you've been orf'ly good—orf'ly. But as for anything else, I'm sure Ineverthought of it."
"Then think of it now. Or—does that mean that you don't care for me?"
There was an awful pause. Then Flossie said very indistinctly, so indistinctly that he had to lean his face to hers to catch the words, "No, of course it doesn't." Her voice cleared suddenly. "But if you didn't hate me, why did you go away?"
"I went away because I was ill."
"And are you any better?"
"Yes, I think I'm better. I think I'm nearly all right now. I might say I'll undertake never to be ill again, at least, not if you'll marry me."
At these words his genius turned and looked at him with eyes ominous and aghast. He had a vision of another woman kneeling beside a hearth as her hands tended a dying fire. And he hardly saw the woman at his side as he drew her to him and kissed her again because of the pain at his heart. And Flossie wondered why in that moment he did not look at her.
He was looking now. And as he looked his genius hid his face.
"You knew that was what I wanted?"
She shook her head slowly. "What does that mean? That you didn't know? Or that you won't? But you will, Flossie?"
As he drew her to him a second time the old terror woke in his heart; but only for a moment. For this time Flossie kissed him of her own accord, with a kiss, not passionate like his own, but sweet and fugitive. It was like a reminder of the transience of the thing he sought, a challenge rousing him to assert its immortality.
He put her from him, and stooped over his own outstretched arms and clasped hands; staring stupidly at the floor. When he spoke again it was hardly, incisively, as a man speaks the truth he hates. "Do you know what this means? It means waiting."
"Waiting?"
"Yes. I'm not a bit well off, you know; I couldn't give you the sort of home you ought to have just yet. I'd no business to say anything about it; but somehow I thought you'd rather know. And of course I've no business to ask you, but—will you wait?"
"Well—if we must, we must."
"And if it means working at that beastly Bank for another year, do you think you can keep it up so long?"
"I'll try to."
She leaned towards him, and they sat there, holding each other's hands, looking into each other's eyes, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, but the beating of their own riotous hearts.
It was love as nature loves to have it. It was also what men call honest love. But in the days when he had loved dishonestly, he had never slipped from Poppy Grace's side with such a sense of misery and solitude and shame.
The game was over and Flossie had won. She had forced Fate's hand, or rather, Mr Rickman's. Not by any coarse premeditated methods; Flossie was too subtly feminine for that. She had trusted rather to the inspiration of the moment, and when her beautiful womanly emotions gave her the opening she had simply followed it, that was all. And could anything have been more correct? She had not "given herself away" once by word or look. With true maidenly modesty she had hidden her own feelings until she was perfectly sure of Mr. Rickman's. There was nothing—nothing to make her feel ashamed when she looked back upon that day; a reflection from which she derived much consolation afterwards.
It gave her courage to fly downstairs to Mrs. Downey's private room where that lady sat doing her accounts, to lean over the back of Mrs. Downey's chair and to whisper into her ear, "I've been dusting Mr. Rickman's books, He caught me at it."
Mrs. Downey could not have shown more excitement if Flossie had told her that the kitchen boiler had burst. "Flossie! My goodness, whatever did he say?"
"He didn't mind one bit. Only—you won't tell him you told me not to touch them, will you, Mrs. Downey?" She brought her soft blushing cheek close to Mrs. Downey's and the warmth of it told her tale.
And Mrs. Downey promised not to tell, pardoning the subterfuge for love's sake, which excuses all. "Has he gone, Flossie?" she inquired anxiously.
"No. He's not going. He's come back for good."
"There! Didn't I say he would!"
"And what d'you think," said Flossie, sitting down and spreading her plump arm on the secretary all over the accounts. "He's done it. He did it up there."
Mrs. Downey stared, and Flossie nodded as much as to say "Fact!"
"You don't mean to say so?"
"Nobody's more surprised than myself."
The rest was kisses and congratulations, wholly magnanimous on Mrs. Downey's part; for the announcement of Flossie's engagement cost her one of the gayest, most desirable, and most remunerative of her brilliant circle. Mr. Spinks (regarded by himself and everybody else as permanent) gave notice and vanished from that hour, carrying with him the hopes of Miss Ada Bishop. Meanwhile Flossie (hitherto regarded from a merely decorative point of view) became a person of considerable importance in the boarding-house. It was not merely that she was an engaged young lady; for, as Miss Bishop pointed out to her with some natural asperity, anybody can be engaged; but she had now the privilege, denied to any other boarder, of going in and out of Mr. Rickman's study. She said that she went in to tidy it; but strange to say, the more Flossie tidied it the more hopeless it became. Mr. Rickman's study was never what you might call a really tidy room; but at any rate there had always been a certain repose about it. And now you could not well imagine a more unrestful place, a place more suggestive of hurry and disorder, of an utter lack of the leisure in which ideas ripen and grow great.
The table had become a troubled sea of primeval manuscript, where Mr. Rickman sat with his head in his hands, brooding over the face of the waters. He had once profanely said that God's world was a chaos he had got to work on. Now it washisworld that was chaos. A tempestuous chaos, where things to be weltered in the wreck of things that were. Rickman's genius, like Nature, destroyed in order that it might create; yet it seemed to him that nowadays the destruction was out of all proportion to the creation. He sighed as he gazed at the piteous fragments that represented six months' labour; fragments that wept blood; the torn and mutilated limbs of living thoughts; with here and there huge torsos of blank verse, lopped and hewn in the omnipotent fury of a god at war with his world; mixed up with undeveloped and ethereal shapes, the embryos of dreams.
And yet it was not altogether the divine rage of the artist that had wrought this havoc. The confusion argued a power at war with itself rather than with its creations; the very vastness of it all suggested a deity tied as to time, but apparently unshackled as to space. That was it. There really wasn't as much time as there used to be. It was in his free evenings and on Sundays that his best thoughts came to him, the beautiful shy thoughts that must be delicately courted. And now his free evenings and his Sundays were given up to the courting of Flossie. And even on a week-day this was what would happen. He would rush home early from Fleet Street and settle down for two hours' work before dinner. Then a little timid knock would be heard at the door, and Flossie would come in bringing him a cup of tea. He couldn't just swill it down like a pig and send the dear little thing away. Hehadto let her sit and see him drink it, slowly, as if he thoroughly enjoyed it. Or he would come in (as on that blessed evening six months ago) and find Flossie dusting books; standing perhaps on two tottering hassocks and a chair, at an altitude perilous to so plump a person. And Flossie had to be lifted down from the hassocks and punished with hard kisses, and told not to do it again. And Flossie would do it again. So that a great deal of time was lost in this way. And with the touch of those soft little arms about his neck demoralization would set in for the evening.
And then there was Flossie's education to be attended to; and that took more time than anything. It meant that, as the November days drew in, he had to read or talk to Flossie as she sat in his armchair with her dear little feet on his fender, and her dear little hands mending his socks and shirts and things. They might have been married for years, only they weren't; that was what made it so exciting. Flossie's hands were always mending or making something (generally something to wear), and it was rather strange that it never occurred to such a busy person that other people might be busy too. He tried to break it to her. He told her (like a brute) that he thought all his things must be mended now, and that perhaps for another week he would be better without any tea. And Flossie (very naturally offended) didn't put her dear little nose in at his door for two weeks. And for all you could get through in that time it was hardly worth while offending her.
But he was very far wrong in supposing that Flossie never thought about his work. She had been thinking a great deal about it lately. One cold bright Sunday morning in November she tapped at his door and walked in dressed for the open air. "Aren't you coming for a walk," she said, "this lovely day?"
"Too busy." To signify his annoyance, or to keep himself from temptation, he bent closer over the article he was writing forThe Museion. She came and stood beside him, watching him as he worked, still with his air of passionate preoccupation. Presently he found himself drawn against his will into the following conversation.
"How long does it take you to do one of those things?"
"It depends."
"Depends on what?"
"Oh, on the amount of trouble I take over it."
"And do they pay you any more for taking trouble?"
"No, Flossie. I'm sorry to say they frequently pay me less."
"Then why on earth do you do it?"
This question seemed to him so curious that it caused him to look up, beholding for the first time the plump figure clothed entirely in a new suit of brown, and wearing on its head a fascinating hat made of something that resembled fur. He tried to look at it with disapproval, while his mind dealt independently with the amazing question put to him.
"Well, Flossie, if you really care anything about style—"
"Style?" She stroked down the front of her jacket with a delicious movement of her little hands. "Don't you like it?"
He smiled. "I adore it. It makes you look like a dear little brown Beaver, as you are." "The Beaver" was only one of the many names he had for her; it was suggested irresistibly by her plumpness, her singularly practical intelligence, and her secretive ways.
"Then what do you mean by style?" asked the Beaver in a challenging tone that forced him to lay down his pen.
"What do I mean by style?" He explained, moved by the mad lust for mystification which seizes a man in the presence of adorable simplicity. "I don't mean anything in the least resembling a Beaver's coat (there really isn't any style about a Beaver's coat). And if you want me to say it's the clothing of your thoughts, I won't. The less clothing they have the better. It can't be treated as a Beaver treats its coats. You can put it on and off (I was putting it on when you came in and interrupted me); and you can mend it, and brush it up a bit; but you can't measure it, or make it to order, and when it wears out you can't get another where you got the first. Style isn't the clothing, it's the body of your thoughts, my Beaver; and in a slap-up, A 1 style, the style of the masters,mystyle, you can't tell the body from the soul."
"If you'd said you couldn't tell the body from the skirt it would sound like sense."
That remark was (for the Beaver) really so witty that he leaned back in his chair and laughed at it. But the Beaver was in no laughing humour. "Look here," she said, "yousaythat if you write those stylish things that take up such a lot of time, they only pay you less for them."
"Well?"
"Well, is it fair of you to go on writing them?"
"Fair ofme? My dear child, why not?"
"Be-cause, if I buy stylish things Ihaveto pay for them. And I've been buying them long enough, just to please you."
"I don't follow. But I suppose a Beaver has to reason backwards; because, you know, all its intelligence is in its tail."
"Gracious, Keith! You are a silly."
"I am not alone in my opinion. It's the opinion of some very eminent zoologists." He drew her gently on his knee; raised her veil and looked into her eyes. They were (as he had often had occasion to notice) of so deep and black a black that the iris was indistinguishable from the pupil, and this blackness limited the range of their expression. They could only tell you what Flossie was feeling, never what she was thinking; for thought requires a translucent medium, and the light of Flossie's eyes was all on the surface. On the other hand, the turns and movements of her body were always a sufficient indication of the attitude of her mind. At the present moment, sitting on Keith's knee, her pose was not one of pure complacency. But holding her there, that little brown Beaver, his own unyielding virile body deliciously aware of the strange, incredible softness of hers, he wondered whether it were possible for him to feel anything but tender to a creature so strangely and pathetically made. Positively she seemed to melt and grow softer by sheer contact; and presently she smiled a sweet diminutive smile that didn't uncover more than two of her little white teeth.
"Oh, what a shame it is to treat a Beaver so!" said he.
"When are you going to take me for a nice walk?" said she. "Any time before Christmas?"
"Perhaps. But you mustn't build on it."
"I don't see that I can build on anything at this rate."
"I suppose a Beaver can't be happy unless it's always building? That's why some people say it hasn't any intelligence at all. They won't even allow that it can build. They think its architectural talent is all a delusion and a sham; because it builds in season and out of season. Keep it in your study, and it will make a moat round the hearthrug with tobacco pouches and manuscripts and boots—whatever it can lay its hands on. It will even take the ideas out of a man's head, if it can't find anything better. Is there any logic in an animal that can do that?" And if Flossie did not understand the drift of these remarks at least she seemed to understand the kisses that punctuated them.
But before very long he obtained more light on the Beaver's logic, and owned that it was singularly sound. They managed to put in a great many nice walks between that Sunday and Christmas. Whenever he could spare time Rickman made a point of meeting Flossie at the end of her day's work. He generally waited at the corner where the long windowless wall of the Bank stretches along Prince's Street, iron and implacable. It was too cold now to sit under the shadow of St. Paul's. Sometimes they would walk home along Holborn, sometimes they would go down Ludgate Hill and thence on to the Embankment. It was certainly better for Flossie to be out of doors than in the dingy drawing-room in Tavistock Place. They could talk freely in the less crowded thorough-fares; and it was surprising the things they still found to say to each other all about nothing. Every trace of Flossie's depression had vanished; she walked with a brisk step, she chatted gaily, she laughed the happiest laughter at the poorest jokes. All was going well; and why, oh why could he not let well alone?
They were walking on the Embankment one day, and she, for such a correct little person, was mad with mirth, when he broke out. "Flossie, you little lunatic! You might be going to marry a stock-broker instead of a journalist."
"I'm going to marry a very rich man—for me."
"For you, darling? A devilish poor one, I'm afraid."
"Oh don't! We've said enough about that."
"Yes, but I haven't told you everything. Do you know, I might have been fairly well off by now, if I'd only chosen."
Now there was no need whatever for him to make that revelation. He was driven to it by vanity. He wanted to make an impression. He wanted Flossie to see him in all his moral beauty.
"How was that?" she asked with interest.
"I can't tell you much about it. It was something to do with business. I got an offer of a thumping big partnership three years ago—and I refused it."
He had made an impression. Flossie turned on him a look of wonder, a look uncertain and inscrutable. "What did you do that for?"
"I did it because it was right. I didn't like the business."
"That's not quite the same thing, is it?"
"Not always. It happened to be in this case."
"Why, what sort of business was it?"
"It wasn't scavenging, and it wasn't burglary—exactly. It was—" he hesitated—"only the second-hand book-trade."
"I know—they make a lot of money that way."
"They make too much for my taste sometimes. Besides—"
"Besides what?" They had turned into an embrasure of the parapet to discuss this question. They stood close together looking over the river.
"It isn't my trade. I'm only a blooming journalist."
"You don't make so very much out of that, do you? Is that the reason why we have to wait?"
"I'm afraid so. But I hope I shall be something more than a journalist some day."
"Youlikewriting, don't you?"
"Yes, Flossie; I shouldn't be much good at it, if I didn't."
"I see." She was looking eastwards away from him, and her expression had changed; but it was still inscrutable. And yet by the turning of her head, he saw her mind moving towards a conclusion; but it was impossible to say whether she reached it by the slow process of induction, or by woman's rapid intuition. Anyhow she had reached it. Presently she spoke again. "Could you still get that thing, that partnership any time—if you tried?"
"Any time. But I'm not going to try."
She turned round abruptly with an air of almost fierce determination. "Well, ifIget an offer of a good place,Ishan't refuse it. I shall leave the Bank." She spoke as if so desperate a step would be followed by the instantaneous collapse of that institution.
He was surprised to find how uneasy this threat always made him. The proverbial safety of the Bank had impressed him in more ways than one. And Flossie's post there had other obvious advantages. It brought her into contact with women of a better class than her own, with small refinements, and conventions which were not conspicuous at Mrs. Downey's.
"Let me implore you not to do that. Heaven knows, I hate you having to earn your own living at all, but I'd rather you did it that way than any other."
"Why, what difference would it make to you, I should like to know?"
"It makes all the difference if I know you're doing easy work, not slaving yourself to death as some girls do. Itisan easy berth. And—and I like the look of those girls I saw you with to-day. They were nice. I'd rather think of you working with them than sitting in some horrible office like a man. Promise me you won't go looking out for anything else."
"All right. I promise."
"No, but—on your honour?"
"Honour bright. There! Anything for a quiet life."
They turned on to the street again. Rickman looked at his watch. "Look here, we're both late for dinner—supposing we go and dine somewhere and do a theatre after, eh?"
"Oh no—we mustn't." All the same Flossie's eyes brightened, for she dearly loved the play.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't think perhaps you ought to."
"You mean I can't afford it?"
"Well—"
"Oh, I fancy even a journalist's income will run to that."
It did run to that and to a hansom afterwards, though Flossie protested, dragging at his arm.
"I'd rather walk," said she, "indeed I would."
"Nonsense. Come, bundle in."
"Please—please let me walk." He helped her in and closed the apron sharply. He was annoyed. That was the second time she had insisted on his poverty. He thought she had a little too much the air of preparing herself to be a poor man's wife. Of course it was pretty of her; but he thought it would have been prettier still if she had let it alone.
Now Flossie had never thought of him as a poor man before to-night; but somehow the idea of the good income he might have had and hadn't made him appear poor by comparison. She lay back in the hansom meditating. "If you could only write a play like that, Keith, what a lot of money you'd make."
"Shouldn't I? But then, you see, I couldn't write a play like that."
"Rubbish. I don't believe that author—what d'you call him?—is so very much cleverer than you."
"Thanks." He bowed ironically.
"Well, I mean it. And look how they clapped him—why, they made as much fuss about him as any of the actors. I say, wouldn't you like to hear them calling 'Author! Author!'? And then clapping!"
"H'm!"
"Oh, wouldn't you love it just; you needn't pretend! Look there, I declare I've split my glove." (That meant, as Flossie had calculated, a new pair thatsheshould not have to pay for.)
"Ifyouclapped me I would, Flossie. I should need all the consolation I could get if I'd written as bad a play."
"Well, if that was a bad play, I'd like to see a good one."
"I'll take you to a good one some day."
"Soon?"
"Well, I'm afraid not very soon." He smiled; for the play he thought of taking her to was not yet written; would never be written if many of his evenings were like this. But to Flossie, meditating, his words bore only one interpretation—that Keith was really very much worse off than she had taken him to be.
As they lingered on the doorstep in Tavistock Place, a young man approached them in a deprecating manner from the other side of the street, and took off his hat to Flossie.
"Hallo, Spinks!" said Rickman.
"That you, Razors?" said Spinks.
"It is. What are you doing here?"
"Oh nothing. I was in the neighbourhood, and I thought I'd have a look at the old place."
"Come in, will you? (If they don't come, Flossie, I shallhaveto use my latch-key.")
"Not to-night, thanks, it's a bit too late. I'd better be going." But he did not go.
"I hope," said Flossie politely, "you're comfortable where you are now?"
"Oh, very comfortable, very comfortable indeed." Yet his voice had a melancholy sound, and under the gas-light his face (a face not specially designed for pathos) looked limp and utterly dejected.
"I think, Keith," said Flossie, "you'd better ring again." Ringing was a concession to propriety that Flossie insisted on and he approved. He rang again; and Mrs. Downey in a beautiful wrapper herself opened the door. At the sight of Spinks she gave a joyful exclamation and invited him into the hall. They left him there.
"What's up?" asked Rickman as they parted on his landing.
"Who with? Sidney? I can't tell you—really."
"I wonder why he left."
"I can't tell you that, either." They said good-night at the foot of the stairs, and she kissed him laughing. And the two men heard it echoing in their dreams, that mysterious laughter of woman, which is as the ripple over the face of the deep.