erything, and her gratitude was in exact proportion with the
value of his gift. He did not care. He was too happy when she volunteered
to kiss him to mind by what means he got her demonstrativeness. He
discovered that she found Sundays at home tedious, so he went down to
Herne Hill in the morning, met her at the end of the road, and went to
church with her.

"I always like to go to church once," she said. "It looks well, doesn't
it?"

Then she went back to dinner, he got a scrappy meal at a hotel, and in the
afternoon they took a walk in Brockwell Park. They had nothing much to say
to one another, and Philip, desperately afraid she was bored (she was very
easily bored), racked his brain for topics of conversation. He realised
that these walks amused neither of them, but he could not bear to leave
her, and did all he could to lengthen them till she became tired and out
of temper. He knew that she did not care for him, and he tried to force a
love which his reason told him was not in her nature: she was cold. He had
no claim on her, but he could not help being exacting. Now that they were
more intimate he found it less easy to control his temper; he was often
irritable and could not help saying bitter things. Often they quarrelled,
and she would not speak to him for a while; but this always reduced him to
subjection, and he crawled before her. He was angry with himself for
showing so little dignity. He grew furiously jealous if he saw her
speaking to any other man in the shop, and when he was jealous he seemed
to be beside himself. He would deliberately insult her, leave the shop and
spend afterwards a sleepless night tossing on his bed, by turns angry and
remorseful. Next day he would go to the shop and appeal for forgiveness.

"Don't be angry with me," he said. "I'm so awfully fond of you that I
can't help myself."

"One of these days you'll go too far," she answered.

He was anxious to come to her home in order that the greater intimacy
should give him an advantage over the stray acquaintances she made during
her working-hours; but she would not let him.

"My aunt would think it so funny," she said.

He suspected that her refusal was due only to a disinclination to let him
see her aunt. Mildred had represented her as the widow of a professional
man (that was her formula of distinction), and was uneasily conscious that
the good woman could hardly be called distinguished. Philip imagined that
she was in point of f