e daily threadbare joke, who wearied her mind with
questions as to food, compelled her to sympathise with the vagaries of
the weather or were arch, flirtatious and dragged out of her tired mind
the necessary response. Even Butty and the moist warmth of him, even
Stein with his flaccid surly face, were better in their grossness than
these vapid youths, thoughtless, incapable of thought, incapable of
imagining thought, who set her down as an inferior, as a toy for games
that were not even those of men.

'Beauty' had been a disappointment. She had met him two or three times
since their first evening out. That night Neville, who was a young man
of the world, had pressed his suit so delicately, preserving in so
cat-like a manner his lines of retreat, that she had not been able to
snub him when inclined to. He had a small private income and knew how to
make the best of his good looks by means of gentle manners and smart
clothes. In the insurance office where he was one of those clerks who
have lately evolved from the junior stage, he was nothing in particular
and earned ten pounds a month. He had furnished two rooms on the Chelsea
edge of Kensington, belonged to an inexpensive club in St James's, had
been twice to Brussels and once to Paris; he smoked Turkish cigarettes,
deeming Virginia common; he subscribed to a library in connection with
Mudie's, and knew enough of the middle classes to exaggerate his
impression of them into the smart set. Perhaps he tried a little too
much to be a gentleman.

Neville Brown was strongly attracted to Victoria. He had vainly tried to
draw her out, and scented the lie in her carefully concocted story. He
knew enough to feel that she was at heart one of those women he met 'in
society,' perhaps a little better. Thus she puzzled him extremely, for
she was not even facile; he could hold her hand; she had not refused him
kisses, but he was afraid to secure his grip on her as a man carrying a
butterfly stirs not a finger for fear it should escape.

Victoria turned all this over lazily. Her instinct told her what manner
of man was Neville, for he hardly concealed his desires. Indeed their
relations had something of the charm of a masqued ball. She saw well
enough that Neville was not likely to remain content with kisses, and
viewed the inevitable battle with mixed feelings. She liked him;
indeed, in certain moods and when his blue eyes were at their bluest, he
attracted her magnetically. The remin