e gift, and made one of his
whimsical grimaces when he got the bill. The young lady who served him
looked infinitely more genteel than Mary Ann. He wondered what she
would think if she knew for whom he was buying these dainty articles.
Perhaps her feelings would be so outraged she would refuse to
participate in the transaction. But the young lady was happily
unconscious; she had her best smile for the handsome, aristocratic
young gentleman, and mentioned his moustache later to her bosom-friend
in the next department.

And thus Mary Ann and Lancelot became the joint owners of a secret, and
co-players in a little comedy. When Mary Ann came into the room, she
would put whatever she was carrying on a chair, gravely extract her
gloves from her pocket, and draw them on, Lancelot pretending not to
know she was in the room, though he had just said, "Come in." After
allowing her a minute he would look up. In the course of a week this
became mechanical, so that he lost the semi-ludicrous sense of secrecy
which he felt at first, as well as the little pathetic emotion inspired
by her absolute unconsciousness that the performance was not intended
for her own gratification. Nevertheless, though he could now endure to
see Mary Ann handling the sugar-tongs, he remained cold to her for some
weeks. He had kissed her again in the flush of her joy at the sight of
the gloves, but after that there was a reaction. He rarely went to the
club now (there was no one with whom he was in correspondence except
music-publishers, and they didn't reply), but he dropped in there once
soon after the glove episode, looked over the papers in the
smoking-room, and chatted with a popular composer and one or two men he
knew. It was while the waiter was holding out the coffee-tray to him
that Mary Ann flashed upon his consciousness. The thought of her
seemed so incongruous with the sober magnificence, the massive
respectability that surrounded him, the cheerful, marble hearth
reddened with leaping flame, the luxurious lounges, the well-groomed
old gentlemen smoking eighteenpenny cheroots, the suave, noiseless
satellites, that Lancelot felt a sudden pang of bewildered shame. Why,
the very waiter who stood bent before him would disdain her. He took
his coffee hastily, with a sense of personal unworthiness. This
feeling soon evaporated, but it left lees of resentment against Mary
Ann which made him inexplicable to her. Fortunately, her habit of
ac