kly into the shop, whither Edwin had gone. As she came near him, her
mood changed. She smiled gently. She summoned all her charm; and she
knew that she charmed him.

"Do you know," she said, "you've quite altered my notion of poetry--what
you said as we were going up to the station!"

"Really?" He flushed.

Yes, she had enchanted and entranced him. She had only to smile and to
use a particular tone, soft and breaking.... She knew that.

"But you _do_ alter my notions," she continued, and her clear voice was
poured out like a liquid. "I don't know how it is..." She stopped. And
then, in half-playful accents: "So this is your little office!"

Her hand was on the knob of the open door of the cubicle, a black
erection within the shop, where Edwin and his father kept the accounts
and wrote letters.

"Yes. Go in and have a look at it."

She murmured kindly: "Shall I?" and went in. He followed.

For a moment, she was extremely afraid, and she whispered, scared: "I
must hurry off now."

He ignored this remark.

"Shall you be at Brighton long?" he demanded. And he was so friendly and
simple and timorous and honest-eyed, and his features had such an
extraordinary anxious expression that her own fear seemed to leave her.
She thought, as if surprised by the discovery: "He is a good friend."

"Oh, I can't tell," she answered him. "It depends."

"How soon shall you be down our way again?" His voice was thickening.
She shook her head, speechless. She was afraid again now. His face
altered. He was standing almost over her. She thought: "I am lost! I
have let it come to this!" He was no longer a good friend.

He began to speak, in detached bits of phrases:

"I say--you know--"

"Good-bye, good-bye," she murmured anxiously. "I must go. Thanks very
much."

And foolishly, she held out her hand, which he seized. He bent
passionately, and kissed her like a fresh boy, like a schoolboy. And she
gave back the kiss strongly, with all the profound sincerity of her
nature. His agitation appeared to be extreme; but she was calm; she was
divinely calm. She savoured the moment as though she had been a watcher,
and not an actor in the scene. She thought, with a secret sigh of bliss:
"Yes, it is real, this moment! And I have had it. Am I astonished that
it has come so soon, or did I know it was coming?" Her eyes drank up the
face and the hands and the gestures of her lover. She felt tired, and
sat down in the office chair, and he le