From one extreme he flew to the
other. She sat down on an old sofa; he remained standing. And in the
midst of a little conversation about Mrs Orgreave's indisposition, and
the absence of the members of the family (she said she had refused an
invitation to go with Janet and Alicia to Hillport), she broke the
thread, and remarked--

"You would have known I was coming if you'd been calling here recently."
She pushed her feet near the fender, and gazed into the fire.

"Ah! But you see I haven't been calling recently."

She raised her eyes to his. "I suppose you've never thought about me
once since I left!" she fired at him. An audacious and discomposing
girl!

"Oh yes, I have," he said weakly. What could you reply to such
speeches? Nevertheless he was flattered.

"Really? But you've never inquired about me."

"Yes, I have."

"Only once."

"How do you know?"

"I asked Janet."

"Damn her!" he said to himself, but pleased with her. And aloud, in a
tone suddenly firm, "That's nothing to go by."

"What isn't?"

"The number of times I've inquired." He was blushing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FOUR.

In the smallness of the room, sitting as it were at his feet on the
sofa, surrounded and encaged by a hundred domestic objects and by the
glow of the fire and the radiance of the gas, she certainly did seem to
Edwin to be an organism exceedingly mysterious. He could follow with
his eye every fold of her black dress, he could trace the waving of her
hair, and watch the play of light in her eyes. He might have physically
hurt her, he might have killed her, she was beneath his hand--and yet
she was most bafflingly withdrawn, and the essence of her could not be
touched nor got at. Why did she challenge him by her singular attitude?
Why was she always saying such queer things to him? No other girl (he
thought, in the simplicity of his inexperience) would ever talk as she
talked. He wanted to test her by being rude to her. "Damn her!" he
said to himself again. "Supposing I took hold of her and kissed her--I
wonder what sort of a face she'd pull then!" (And a moment ago he had
been appraising her as nobly beautiful! A moment ago he had been
dwelling on the lovely compassion of her gesture with Mr Shushions!)
This quality of daring and naughty enterprise had never before shown
itself in Edwin, and he was surprised to discover in himself such
impulses. Bu