ions; and their summer excursions to churches
in the neighborhood of London for the purpose of taking rubbings of the
brasses became most important festivals, from the interest she took in
them. In six months she knew more about his odd friends and hobbies than
his own brothers and sisters knew, after living with him all his life;
and Ralph found this very pleasant, though disordering, for his own view
of himself had always been profoundly serious.

Certainly it was very pleasant to be with Mary Datchet and to become,
directly the door was shut, quite a different sort of person, eccentric
and lovable, with scarcely any likeness to the self most people knew. He
became less serious, and rather less dictatorial at home, for he was apt
to hear Mary laughing at him, and telling him, as she was fond of doing,
that he knew nothing at all about anything. She made him, also, take an
interest in public questions, for which she had a natural liking; and
was in process of turning him from Tory to Radical, after a course
of public meetings, which began by boring him acutely, and ended by
exciting him even more than they excited her.

But he was reserved; when ideas started up in his mind, he divided them
automatically into those he could discuss with Mary, and those he must
keep for himself. She knew this and it interested her, for she was
accustomed to find young men very ready to talk about themselves, and
had come to listen to them as one listens to children, without any
thought of herself. But with Ralph, she had very little of this
maternal feeling, and, in consequence, a much keener sense of her own
individuality.

Late one afternoon Ralph stepped along the Strand to an interview with
a lawyer upon business. The afternoon light was almost over, and already
streams of greenish and yellowish artificial light were being poured
into an atmosphere which, in country lanes, would now have been soft
with the smoke of wood fires; and on both sides of the road the shop
windows were full of sparkling chains and highly polished leather
cases, which stood upon shelves made of thick plate-glass. None of these
different objects was seen separately by Denham, but from all of them he
drew an impression of stir and cheerfulness. Thus it came about that he
saw Katharine Hilbery coming towards him, and looked straight at her, as
if she were only an illustration of the argument that was going forward
in his mind. In this spirit he noticed the ra