d in this, as well he might be, she told him that she
could not bear to see cats hungry or lost dogs, especially lost dogs, and
she described to him one that she had seen. She had not liked to tell a
policeman; they stared so hard. Those words were of strange omen, and
Hilary turned his head away. The little model, perceiving that she had
made an effect of some sort, tried to deepen it. She had heard they did
all sorts of things to people--but, seeing at once from Hilary's face
that she was not improving her effect, she broke off suddenly, and
hastily began to tell him of her breakfast, of how comfortable she was
now she had got her clothes; how she liked her room; how old Mr. Creed
was very funny, never taking any notice of her when he met her in the
morning. Then followed a minute account of where she had been trying to
get work; of an engagement promised; Mr. Lennard, too, still wanted her
to pose to him. At this she gashed a look at Hilary, then cast down her
eyes. She could get plenty of work if she began that way. But she
hadn't, because he had told her not, and, of course, she didn't want to;
she liked coming to Mr. Stone so much. And she got on very well, and she
liked London, and she liked the shops. She mentioned neither Hughs nor
Mrs. Hughs. In all this rigmarole, told with such obvious purpose,
stolidity was strangely mingled with almost cunning quickness to see the
effect made; but the dog-like devotion was never quite out of her eyes
when they were fixed on Hilary.

This look got through the weakest places in what little armour Nature had
bestowed on him. It touched one of the least conceited and most amiable
of men profoundly. He felt it an honour that anything so young as this
should regard him in that way. He had always tried to keep out of his
mind that which might have given him the key to her special feeling for
himself--those words of the painter of still life: "She's got a story of
some sort." But it flashed across him suddenly like an inspiration: If
her story were the simplest of all stories--the direct, rather brutal,
love affair of a village boy and girl--would not she, naturally given to
surrender, be forced this time to the very antithesis of that young
animal amour which had brought on her such, sharp consequences?

But, wherever her devotion came from, it seemed to Hilary the grossest
violation of the feelings of a gentleman to treat it ungratefully. Yet
it was as if for the