of Florrie's aunt and of her
family. "Louisa!" she called loudly up the stairs and down into the
basement.

III

She followed the procession of the trunk upstairs, and, Louisa having
descended again, showed Florrie into the kennel. This tiny apartment had
in it two truckle-beds, and a wash-bowl on a chair, and little else. A
very small square trap-window in the low ceiling procured a dusky light
in the middle hours of the day. Florence seemed delighted with the room;
she might have had to sleep under the stairs.

"Put on your afternoon apron, and then you can go down and see Miss
Gailey," said Hilda, and shut the door upon Florrie in her new home.

When she turned, there was George Cannon on the half-landing beneath the
skylight! She knew not how he had come there, nor whether he had entered
the house before or after herself.

"I'm glad he isn't fat!" she thought. And it was as though she had
thought: "If he were fat everything would be different." Her features
did not relax as she went down the five steps to the half-landing where
he waited, smiling faintly. She thought: "We must be very serious and
circumspect in the house. There must never be the slightest--" But while
she was yet on the last step, he firmly put his hands on her ears and,
drawing her head towards him, kissed her full on the mouth, and she saw
again, through her eyelashes, all the details of his face. She yielded.
All her ideas of circumspection melted magically away in an abandoned
tenderness of which she was ashamed, but for which she would have
unreflectingly made any sacrifice. The embrace was over in an instant.
Besides being guiltless of obesity, George Cannon was free from the
unpardonable fault of clumsiness. He was audacious, but he was not
foolhardy, and he would never be abashed. True, she had seen dismay on
his face at the moment of his declaration, but that moment was unique,
and his dismay had ineffably flattered her. Now, on the half-landing,
she was drenched in bliss. And she felt dissolute; she felt even base.
But she did not care. She thought, as it were, startled: "This is love.
This must be what love is. I must have been in love without knowing it.
And as for a girl always knowing when a man's in love with her, and
foreseeing the proposal, and all that sort of thing...." Her practical
contempt for all that sort of thing could not be stated in words.

"Florrie's just come," she whispered, and by a movement of the head
indic