that candour and that charm
and that lovely seriousness! Moreover, he could teach her. She had
already blossomed--in a fortnight. She was blossoming. She would
blossom further.

Odd that, when he had threatened to pull out a revolver, she, so
accustomed to revolvers, should have taken a girlish alarm! That queer
detail of her behaviour was extraordinarily seductive. But far beyond
everything else it was the grand loyalty of her nature that drew him.
He wanted to sink into it as into a bed of down. He really needed
it. Enveloped in that loving loyalty of a creature who gave all and
demanded nothing, he felt that he could truly be his best self, that
he could work marvels. His eyes were moist with righteous ardour.

The cutlery reposed in a green-lined basket. She had doffed the apron
and hung it behind the scullery door. With all the delicious curves of
her figure newly revealed, she was reaching the alarm-clock down from
the mantelpiece, and then she was winding it up. The ratchet of the
wheel clacked, and the hurried ticking was loud. In the grate of the
range burned one spot of gloomy red.

"Your bedtime, I suppose?" he murmured, rising elegantly.

She smiled. She said--

"Shall you lock up, or shall I?"

"Oh! I think I know all the tricks," he replied, and thought, "She's a
pretty direct sort of girl, anyway!"

IV

About an hour later he went up to his room. It was a fact that
everything had been made right for him. The gas burned low. He raised
it, and it shone directly upon the washstand, which glittered with
the ivory glaze of large earthenware, and the whiteness of towels that
displayed all the creases of their folding. There was a new cake of
soap in the ample soap-dish, and a new tooth-brush in a sheath of
transparent paper lay on the marble. "Rather complete this!" he
reflected. The nail-brush--an article in which he specialized--was
worn, but it was worn evenly and had cost good money. The water-bottle
dazzled him; its polished clarity was truly crystalline. He could
not remember ever having seen a toilet array so shining with strict
cleanness. Indeed, it was probable that he had never set eyes on an
absolutely clean water-bottle before; the qualities associated with
water-bottles in his memory were semi-opacity and spottiness.

The dressing-table matched the washstand. A carriage clock in leather
had been placed on the mantelpiece. In front of the mantelpiece was an
old embroidered fire-scree