could distinguish only a male overcoated back in the glass--was Oswald
Morfey. The images were very close together. They did not move. Then Mr.
Prohack overheard a whisper, but did not catch its purport. Then the
image of the girl's face began to blush; it went redder and redder, and
the crimson seemed to flow downwards until the exposed neck blushed
also. A marvellous and a disconcerting spectacle. Mr. Prohack felt that
he himself was blushing. Then the two images blended, and the girl's
head and hat seemed to be agitated as by a high wind. And then both
images moved out of the field of the mirror.

The final expression on the girl's face as it vanished was one of the
most exquisite things that Mr. Prohack had ever witnessed. It brought
the tears to his eyes. Nevertheless he was shocked.

His mind ran:

"That fellow has kissed my daughter, and he has kissed her for the first
time. It is monstrous that any girl, and especially my daughter, should
be kissed for the first time. I have not been consulted, and I had not
the slightest idea that matters had gone so far. Her mother has probably
been here, with Charlie, and gone off leaving these doves together.
Culpable carelessness on her part. Talk about mothers! No father would
have been guilty of such negligence. The affair must be stopped. It
amounts to an outrage."

A peculiar person, Mr. Prohack! No normal father could have had such
thoughts. Mr. Prohack could of course have burst in upon the pair and
smashed an idyll to fragments. But instead of doing so he turned away
from the idyll and descended the stairs as stealthily as he could.

Nobody challenged his exit. In the street he breathed with relief as if
he had escaped from a house of great peril; but he did not feel safe
until he had lost himself in the populousness of Oxford Street.

"For social and family purposes," he reflected, "I have not seen that
kiss. I cannot possibly tell them, or tell anybody, that I spied upon
their embrace. To put myself right I ought to have called out a greeting
the very instant I spotted them. But I did not call out a greeting. By
failing to do so I put myself in a false position.... How shall I get
official news of that kiss? Shall I ever get news of it?"

He had important business to transact with tradesmen. He could not do
it. On leaving home he had not decided whether he would lunch
domestically or at the Grand Babylon. He now perceived that he could do
neither. He would