uld sit in Martin's hotel, which had a large, deserted
lounge with sensible corners and crannies for conversation. Sometimes
he would go back with Freda to her room in Bloomsbury and wait until
she turned him out.

"I won't have you here after eleven," she told him and quoted from _The
Great Adventure_ on reputations, the coddling and neglect of them.

"But if you have me at all----" he protested.

"I'm English and I believe in compromise," she answered.

So he stayed till eleven. It was a neat place and orderly with naked
walls: he loved it as he loved its owner. When the washstand and bed
had been hidden behind their curtain, the stray shoes kicked beneath
the wardrobe, and the arm-chair drawn up to the gas-fire, there seemed
to be nothing mean or sordid in the room despite the lack of space and
the roof corner that jutted rudely in. What did it matter now if the
window looked on to a back yard and a world of chimneys?

"Why are you so wonderfully tidy?" Martin asked.

"Don't you associate tidiness with me?"

"No, you're too wild. Tidinesss is a petty virtue."

"Well I confess it hasn't anything to do with my general character. I
hope I'm not petty anyhow. It's sternly practical tidiness. I used to
be lazy and find my stockings muddled up with the spoons, but it soon
sickened me and now I have come to prefer the fag of clearing up to the
discomfort of a muddle. Besides, if I'm going to have you here it
oughtn't to be a beddy 'bed-sit,' but a sitty 'bed-sit.'"

"Your precious reputation," he laughed.

On another night she asked him what the Berrisfords thought about his
absence from home.

"I don't know and I don't think I care!" he answered.

"Why? They must be interested in you, and you're very fond of them."

"I dare say, but I can't think of them now." He drew her to him.
"Freda, I'm too happy to care about them. I just can't imagine that
the world has any other place but London, or any other people but you
and me. Nothing else is real; nothing counts, not India or Oxford or
anything."

She yielded herself to him, but suddenly drew back.

"You mustn't go and muddle things," she said conscientiously.
"Supposing you fail next September, what would I feel like?"

"I won't fail next September," he answered defiantly.

"I'm glad you said that. You must be confident, much, much more
confident. I'm sure you would have been happier if you had never been
afraid of things."

Ecstasy to kn