ers clasped her acquiescent fingers, and her
chaste and confiding passion ran through him in powerful voltaic
currents from some inexhaustible source of energy in her secret heart. It
seemed to him that since their ride home in the hansom from the
Promenade concert her faculty for love had miraculously developed. He
divined great deeps in her, and deeps beyond those deeps. The tenderness
which he felt for her was inexpressible. He said not a word, keeping to
himself the terrific resolves to which she, and the wind, and the
spectacular majesty of London inspired him. He and she would live
regally in one of those very houses, and people should kowtow to her
because she was the dazzling wife of the renowned young architect,
George Cannon. And he would show her to Mrs. John Orgreave and to Lois,
and those women should acknowledge in her a woman incomparably their
superior. They should not be able to hide their impressed astonishment
when they saw her.

Nothing of all this did he impart to her as she hung supported and
inspiring on his arm. He held it all in reserve for her. And then,
thinking again for a moment of what she had said about Agg's liking for
him, he thought of Agg's picture and of Marguerite's design which had
originated the picture. It was a special design, new for Marguerite,
whose bindings were generally of conventional patterns; it was to be
paid for at a special price because of its elaborateness; she had worked
on it for nearly two days; in particular she had stayed indoors during
the whole of Sunday to finish it; and it was efficient, skilful, as good
as it could be. It had filled her life for nearly two days--and he had
not even mentioned it to her! In the ruthless egotism of the ambitious
man he had forgotten it, and forgotten to imagine sympathetically the
contents of her mind. Sharp remorse overcame him; she grew noble and
pathetic in his eyes.... Contrast her modest and talented industry with
the exacting, supercilious, incapable idleness of a Lois!

"That design of yours is jolly good," he said shortly without any
introductory phrases.

She perceptibly started.

"Oh! George! I'm so glad you think so. I was afraid. You know it was
horribly difficult--they give you no chance."

"I know. I know. You've come out of it fine."

She was in heaven; he also, because it was so easy for him to put her
there. He glanced backwards a few hours into the past, and he simply
could not comprehend how it was t