"Oh, Ricky-ticky," he said, "you know everything. How did you know
it?"

"Because I've been there."

"But--you didn't stay?"

"No--no. I didn't stay. I couldn't."

"I'm still there. And for the life of me I see no way out. It's like
going round in the underground railway--a vicious circle. Since you're
given to confession--own up. Don't you ever want to get back there?"

"Not yet. My way won't take me back if I only stick to it."

Under the stars he endeavoured to account for his extraordinary
choosing of the way.

"I've three reasons for keeping straight. To begin with, I've got a
conviction that I'll write something great if I don't go to the devil
first. Then, there's Horace Jewdwine."

Maddox hardened his face; he had been told not to talk about Jewdwine,
and he wasn't going to.

"If I go to the devil, he won't go with me. Say what you like, he's a
saint compared with you and me. If he doesn't understand Songs of
Confession, it's because he's never had anything to confess. The third
reason--if I go to the devil--no, I can't tell you the third reason.
It's also the reason why I wear my magnificent trousers. All the
reasons amount to that. If I go to the devil I can't wear those
trousers. Never, Maddox, believe me, never again."

Maddox smiled, and, unlike Maddox, he said one thing and thought
another.

What he said was. "Your trousers, Ricky-ticky, are of too heavenly a
pattern for this wicked world. They are such stuff as dreams are made
of, and their little life--" he paused. What he thought was--"Your
way, Ricky-ticky, is deuced hard for the likes of me. But I'll go with
you as far as I can, my son."

Under the stars they looked into each other's faces and they knew
themselves aright.




CHAPTER XLIV


Jewdwine made up for the coldness of his published utterances by the
fervour of his secret counsel. His advice to Rickman was, "Beware of
the friendship of little men."

This Rickman understood to be a reflection on Maddox's position in the
world of letters. He did not care a rap about Maddox's position; but
there were moments when it was borne in upon him that Maddox was a
bigger man even than Horace Jewdwine, that his reckless manner poorly
disguised a deeper insight and a sounder judgement. His work on _The
Planet_ proved it every day. And though for himself he could have
desired a somewhat discreeter champion, he had the highest opinion of
his friend's courage in standing up for him when there was absolutely
nothing to be gained by it. He had every reason therefore to be
attached to Maddox.

But it was true enough that he knew too many little men; men who were
at home in that house of bondage from which he was for ever longing to
escape; men whom he had met as he had described, sitting contentedly
on the dirty back-stairs of Fleet Street; men who in rubbing shoulders
with each other in that crowded thoroughfare had had to allow for a
great deal of what Maddox called wear and tear. Those little men had
remained invincibly, imperturbably friendly. They knew perfectly well
that he thought them little men, and they delighted in their great man
all the same, more than ever, in fact, since his new suit of morals
provided them with a subject of eternal jest. For Maddox was but
human, and he had found Rickman's phrase too pregnant with humour to
be lost. They were sometimes very funny, those Junior Journalists,
especially on a Saturday night. But Rickman was not interested in the
unseemly obstacle race they dignified by the name of a career, and he
did not care to mix too freely with young men so little concerned
about removing the dirt and sweat of it. He clung to Maddox and Rankin
as the strongest and the cleanest of them all. But even they had
inspirations that left him cold, and they thought many things large
and important that were too small for him to see. He would have died
rather than let either of them know what he was doing now. He saw with
dismay that they suspected him of doing something, that their
suspicions excited them most horribly, that they were watching him;
and he had told Maddox that what he desired most was peace and
quietness.

He found it in the Secret Chamber of the Muse, where he shut himself
up when his work with them was done. In there, his days and nights
were as the days and nights of God. There he forecast the schemes of
dramas yet to be, dramas no longer neo-classic. And as his genius
foresaw the approach of its maturity, it purified and emptied itself
of the personal passion that obscures the dramatist's vision of the
world. This it did in a sequence of Nine and Twenty sonnets, a golden
chain that bound Lucia's name to his whether she would or no. They
recorded nine and twenty moments in the life of his passion, from the
day of its birth up to the present hour, the hour of its purification.

For it was still young in him; though at this distance of time Lucia's
image was no longer one and indivisible. He had come to think of her
as two persons clothed mysteriously in the same garment of flesh. One
carried that garment a little more conspicuously than the other; it
was by her beauty that she pierced him with the pain of longing; and
not by her beauty only, but by the marks of suffering that in his
memory still obscured it. She came before him, and her tragic eyes
reproached him with the intolerable pathos of her fate, making him
suffer too, through his exceeding pity. And yet his longing had not
been consumed by pity, but had mingled with it as flame in flame. Long
after he had parted from her, his senses ached as they recalled the
exquisite movements of her body. He had only to shut his eyes, and he
was aware of the little ripple of her shoulders and the delicate
swaying of her hips. To lie awake in the dark was to see her kneeling
at his side, to feel the fragrance of her thick braid of hair
flattened and warmed by her sleep, and the light touch of her hands as
they covered him. And before that memory his shame still burnt deeper
than his desire.

But this Lucia had no desire for him and no pity. Her countenance,
seen even in dreams, expressed a calm but immutable repugnance. No
wonder, for _she_ was only acquainted with the pitiably inadequate
sample of him introduced to her as Mr. Rickman of Rickman's. He was
aware that she belonged exclusively not only to Jewdwine's class, but
to Jewdwine himself in some way (a way unspeakably disagreeable to
contemplate). If he was not to think of her as enduring the
abominations of poverty, he must think of her as married to Jewdwine.
Married to Jewdwine, she would make an end of his friendship as she
had made an end of his peace of mind. There had been moments, at the
first, when he had felt a fierce and unforgiving rage against her for
the annoyance that she caused him.

But now, dividing the host of turbulent and tormenting memories, there
appeared a different Lucia, an invincible but intimate presence that
brought with it a sense of deliverance and consolation. It was Lucia
herself that saved him from Lucia. Her eyes were full of discernment
and of an infinite tenderness and compassion. They kindled in him the
desire that fulfils itself in its own utterance.

That this Lucia was not wholly the creature of his imagination he was
assured by his memory of certain passages in his life at Harmouth, a
memory that had all the vividness and insistence of the other. It was
the Lucia he had known before the other Lucia, the Lucia who had
divined and would divine him still. In a way she was more real than
the other, more real than flesh and blood, even as that part of him by
which he apprehended her was more real than the rest. From her he was
not and could not be divided; they belonged to each other, and by no
possibility could he think of this Lucia as married to Jewdwine, or of
his friendship for Jewdwine as in anyway affected by her. He was hers
by right of her perfect comprehension of him; for such comprehension
was of the nature of possession. It was also an assurance of her
forgiveness, if indeed she had anything to forgive. He had not wronged
her; it was the other Lucia he had wronged. In all this he never once
thought of her as his inspiration. She would not have desired him to
think of her so, being both too humble and too proud to claim any part
in the genius she divined. But she could not repudiate all connection
with it, because it was in the moments when his genius was most
dominant that he had this untroubled assurance of her presence.

And there in the Secret Chamber he bound her to him by an
indestructible chain, the chain of the Nine and Twenty Sonnets.

The question was what should he do with it now that it was made? To
dedicate twenty-nine sonnets to Lucia was one thing, to print them was
another. If it was inevitable that he should thus reveal himself after
the manner of poets, it was also inevitable that she should regard a
public declaration as an insult rather than an honour. And he himself
shrank from exposing so sacred a thing to the pollution and violence
of publicity. Therefore he took each sonnet as it was written, and hid
it in a drawer. But he was not without prescience of their ultimate
value, and after all this method of disposal seemed to him somehow
unsatisfactory. So he determined that he would leave the manuscript to
Lucia in his will, to be afterwards dealt with as she judged best,
whether she chose to publish or to burn. In the former case the
proceeds might be regarded as partial payment of a debt.

And so two years passed and it was Spring again.





CHAPTER XLV


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 through _that_.

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's_ all 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 that _does_ fetch 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 what _am_ I 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.




CHAPTER XLVI


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 she
_didn't_ know, 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, _in_ it, 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, "what _have_ you
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 of _them_."

"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. What
_did_ you 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. But _you_
knew 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? You _are_
literal. 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 I _never_ thought 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.




CHAPTER XLVII


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 was _his_ world 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. He _had_
to 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 for _The
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, _my_ style, 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, "you _say_ that 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 of _me_? My dear child, why not?"

"Be-_cause_, if I buy stylish things I _have_ to 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.