ked Mr. Philip James. He had lit t

r them with the cleanest candour. As one rewards the man who has restored a lost purse by giving him some of the coins in it, so she shared with them, by the most

in her blue linen overall, dispersed one's thoughts; it was as if a wireless found its waves jammed by another instrument. Often he found himself compelled to abandon his train of ideas and apprehend her experiences: to feel a little tired himself if she drooped over her machine, to imagine, as she pinned on her tam-o'-shanter and ran down the stairs, how the cold air would presently prick her smooth skin. Yet these apprehensions were quite uncoloured by any emotional tone. It was simply that she was essentially conspicuous, that one had to watch her as one watches a very tall man going through a crowd. Even now, instead of registering disapproval at her moodiness, he was loo

down by the fire. "Well, what should ha

believed, too, that he was not one of the impeccable and happy to whom one dare not disclose one's need for pity, for she was sure that the clipped speech that slid through his half-opened mouth was a sign that secretly he was timid and ashamed. So she cried honestly, "I'm so dull that I'll die. You and Mr. James are awfully good to me, and I can put up with Mr. Morrison, though he's a doited old thing, and I like my work, but coming here in

ding people. They saw

me sick. And then I hear a band play-not the pipes, they make me think of Walter Scott's poetry, which I never could bear, but a band. I feel that if I followed it it woul

he girls to Germ

orld is! The people who can afford to go to Italy

" said Mr. Philip. "I just ta

rench Revolution I'm wanting. Something grand and coloure

hat now," he said stolidly, "and

uth America. I've read about them in Richard Harding Davis. Did ever you read him? Min

ace," said

"as if I should die if something didn't happen at once: something big, something that woul

orted her, "you're y

, and suddenly wept.

in distress. "Some that's been in South America don't find it to their taste," he said. "The fellow th

o proud to wipe away made her look like a fierce baby. "Property in Ri

wasn't so much. My Aunt Phemie was with him at Mr. Robert Thompson's school in Heriot Row, and she says he was an awful young blackguard, playing with the keelies all he could and gossiping with the cabmen on the rank. She wouldn't have a wor

I'm thinking! The impairtinence of it! All these Edinburgh people ought to go on their knees and thank their Maker that just once, just on

and he found incapacity in women exciting and endearing. He watched her with a hard attention that was his kind of tenderness, as she sat humped schoolgirlishl

just chance that some people had adventures and others hadn't. One makes one's own fate. I have no fate because I'm too weak to make one." She looked down resentfully on her hands, that for all her present fiercenes

olours now, such exquisite distillations of innocent grief at the wasting of the youth of which she was so innocently proud, and generous rage at the decrying of a name that was neither relative nor friend nor employer but merely a maker of beauty. Without doubt she lived in a lonely world, where tears were shed for other things than the gift of gold, and where one could perform these simplicities before a witness without fear of contempt, because human intercourse went only to the tune of charity and pity. Suddenly he wanted to enter into this world; not indeed with the intention of naturalising himself as its inhabitant nor with the intention of staying there fo

ou, Miss Melville. But you know

ed her e

to go into

t you?" She said it in her red-hea

uld have li

ed forward and almost croone

ame more clipp

He suddenly became a person

ort-sighte

he frowned at them as th

're not. I never could play

inger to her lips and murmured, "Well, well!" and at the end of a warm, drowsy moment, after which

u notice me? It was one

ist. Philip Mactavish James. And mother said, 'Yon'll be the son of Mactavish James. Many

y both laughed. He vacillated from the emotional

at sc

ou go to

. It was a shame,

other's dances, but he knew so well the rigid standards of his own bourgeoisie that he felt displeased by his wish. It was impossible to ask a Miss Melville to a dance unless one could say, 'She's the daughter of old Mr. Me

an intentness which was associated with an entire obliviousness of his personal presence, just as a church circle might pray fervently for some missionary without attempting to visualise his face; and though he missed this quaint meaning of her abstraction, he was well content to watch it and nurse his private satisfaction. He was still aware that he was Mr. Philip of the firm, so he was not going to tell her that for two nights after he had heard the decision of the

indulgent. "What

a great notion of politics. "Why, that

ugh," he said, s

er?" she breathed. "Wh

ree hopeless seats. Then the

at will

dn't

intellectual passion. "In Parliament, I mean. There's so much to do. Will it

, with an air of quiet competenc

ip laughed again and felt a kind of glow. He never could get over a feeling that to discover a woman excited about an intellectual thing was like coming on her bathing; her cast-off femininity affected hi

chop for me, so that I won't

in his head. Then she came back with the tray, her cheeks bright and her mouth pursed, for she and the caretaker had been sandpapering each other's temperaments with a few words. "Be thankful she thought to boil a p

in his appreciation of her while she was putting down the tray, spreading out the plates, and doi

s of Burgundy your father keeps

f the dusty cupboard, frowning fiercely at the bottles because it struck him that she would stop singing when he went back, and he could think of no way of asking her to go on that would not be, as he put it, infra dig. And sure enough, when he entered the room a shy silence fell on her, which she

e fireplace until he said, "Pray sit down, Miss

was a gold halo about her head and her face was a dusky oval in which her eyes and the three-cornered patch of her mouth were points of ardour. She had an animal's faculty f

shocked.

mong his conventions, not the least impulse to defer to it. Instead, the project of persu

should have said that, and yet he knew when he had said i

!" And then, to his perplexity, her face fell into complet

ill felt bland and coaxin

thank

urely hav

, n

a dr

e could be sure she was looking at him, and somehow th

t a drop!" and found her

d her hi

ked in dismay, "wi

s tongue, though he still smil

an ice, but warm and very worldly; and informed with solemn pleasure too, for such colours are spilt on marble floors when the sun

eeks and twisting her lips. She had never thought wine was like this. It was not so much a drink as a blow in the mouth. And yet somehow she felt ashamed

that streamed in upon him he perceived that his ecstasy was only just beginning. At last he knew what he wanted to do. With gusto he marked that Ellen too was conscious that the incident was not at its close, for she was still wringing her hands, though the taste of the wine must long have