s afraid of her
dress--not of the material, but of the cut of it. If she had been Susan
in Susan's dowdy and wrinkled alpaca, he would have translated his just
emotion into what critics call "simple, nervous English"--that is to
say, Shakespearean prose. But the aristocratic, insolent perfection of
Helen's gown gave him pause.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded.

"I merely didn't think of it," she said. "I've been very busy."

"If you wanted money, why didn't you ask me for it?" he demanded.

"I've been here over a week," said she, "and you've given me a pound and
a postal order for ten shillings, which I had to ask for. Surely you
must have guessed, uncle, that even if I'd put the thirty shillings in
the savings bank we couldn't live on the interest of it, and that I was
bound to want more. Something like seventy meals have been served in
this house since I entered it."

"I gave Mrs. Butt a pound a wik," he observed.

"But think what a good manager Mrs. Butt was!" she said, with the
sweetness of a saint.

He was accustomed to distributing satire, but not to receiving it. And,
receiving this snowball full in the mouth, he did not quite know what to
do with it; whether to pretend that he had received nothing, or to call
a policeman. He ended by spluttering.

"It's easy enough to ask for money when you want it," he said.

"I hate asking for money," she said. "All women do."

"Then am I to be inquiring every morning whether you want money?" he
questioned, sarcastically.

"Certainly, uncle," she answered. "How else are you to know?"

Difficult to credit that that girl had been an angel of light all the
week, existing in a paradise which she had created for herself, and for
him! And now, to defend an action utterly indefensible, she was
employing a tone that might be compared to some fiendish instrumental
device of a dentist.

But James Ollerenshaw did not wish his teeth stopped, nor yet extracted.
He had excellent teeth. And, in common with all men who have never taken
thirty consecutive repasts alone with the same woman, he knew how to
treat women, how to handle them--the trout!

He stood up. He raised all his body. Helen raised only her eyebrows.

"Helen Rathbone!" Such was the exordium. As an exordium, it was
faultless. But it was destined to remain a fragment. It goes down to
history as a perfect fragment, like the beginning of a pagan temple that
the death of gods has rendered superfluous.

For