still enticing the
bald-headed cock-sparrow to sit upon his hand? Had he succeeded? Would
he ever succeed? She had meant to ask him why it is that the sparrows in
Lincoln's Inn Fields are tamer than the sparrows in Hyde Park--perhaps
it is that the passers-by are rarer, and they come to recognize their
benefactors. For the first half-hour of the committee meeting, Mary
had thus to do battle with the skeptical presence of Ralph Denham, who
threatened to have it all his own way. Mary tried half a dozen methods
of ousting him. She raised her voice, she articulated distinctly, she
looked firmly at Mr. Clacton's bald head, she began to write a note.
To her annoyance, her pencil drew a little round figure on the
blotting-paper, which, she could not deny, was really a bald-headed
cock-sparrow. She looked again at Mr. Clacton; yes, he was bald, and so
are cock-sparrows. Never was a secretary tormented by so many unsuitable
suggestions, and they all came, alas! with something ludicrously
grotesque about them, which might, at any moment, provoke her to such
flippancy as would shock her colleagues for ever. The thought of what
she might say made her bite her lips, as if her lips would protect her.

But all these suggestions were but flotsam and jetsam cast to the
surface by a more profound disturbance, which, as she could not consider
it at present, manifested its existence by these grotesque nods
and beckonings. Consider it, she must, when the committee was over.
Meanwhile, she was behaving scandalously; she was looking out of the
window, and thinking of the color of the sky, and of the decorations
on the Imperial Hotel, when she ought to have been shepherding her
colleagues, and pinning them down to the matter in hand. She could not
bring herself to attach more weight to one project than to another.
Ralph had said--she could not stop to consider what he had said, but he
had somehow divested the proceedings of all reality. And then, without
conscious effort, by some trick of the brain, she found herself becoming
interested in some scheme for organizing a newspaper campaign. Certain
articles were to be written; certain editors approached. What line was
it advisable to take? She found herself strongly disapproving of what
Mr. Clacton was saying. She committed herself to the opinion that now
was the time to strike hard. Directly she had said this, she felt that
she had turned upon Ralph's ghost; and she became more and more in
earne