ad derived, I suppose, partly
from the sort of fiction she got from the Public Library, and partly
from the workroom talk at Smithie's. So far as the former origin went,
she had an idea of love as a state of worship and service on the part of
the man and of condescension on the part of the woman. There was nothing
"horrid" about it in any fiction she had read. The man gave presents,
did services, sought to be in every way delightful. The woman "went out"
with him, smiled at him, was kissed by him in decorous secrecy, and if
he chanced to offend, denied her countenance and presence. Usually she
did something "for his good" to him, made him go to church, made him
give up smoking or gambling, smartened him up. Quite at the end of the
story came a marriage, and after that the interest ceased.

That was the tenor of Marion's fiction; but I think the work-table
conversation at Smithie's did something to modify that. At Smithie's it
was recognised, I think, that a "fellow" was a possession to be desired;
that it was better to be engaged to a fellow than not; that fellows had
to be kept--they might be mislaid, they might even be stolen. There was
a case of stealing at Smithie's, and many tears.

Smithie I met before we were married, and afterwards she became a
frequent visitor to our house at Ealing. She was a thin, bright-eyed,
hawk-nosed girl of thirtyodd, with prominent teeth, a high-pitched,
eager voice and a disposition to be urgently smart in her dress. Her
hats were startling and various, but invariably disconcerting, and she
talked in a rapid, nervous flow that was hilarious rather than witty,
and broken by little screams of "Oh, my dear!" and "you never did!" She
was the first woman I ever met who used scent. Poor old Smithie! What a
harmless, kindly soul she really was, and how heartily I detested her!
Out of the profits on the Persian robes she supported a sister's family
of three children, she "helped" a worthless brother, and overflowed
in help even to her workgirls, but that didn't weigh with me in those
youthfully-narrow times. It was one of the intense minor irritations of
my married life that Smithie's whirlwind chatter seemed to me to have
far more influence with Marion than anything I had to say. Before all
things I coveted her grip upon Marion's inaccessible mind.

In the workroom at Smithie's, I gathered, they always spoke of me
demurely as "A Certain Person." I was rumoured to be dreadfully
"clever," and