y and hungry, having reached that stage of faintness,
headache and hunger when the body sheds its weight and seems to walk
gloriously upon air, to be possessed of supernatural energy. He went
up and down library steps that were ladders, and stood perilously on
the tops of them. He walked round and round the walls, making
calculations, till the library began to swing slowly round too, and a
thin circle of grey mist swung with it. And all the time he was
obscurely aware of a delicate grey-clad figure going to and fro in the
grey mist, or seated intent at the table, doing his work. He felt that
her eyes followed him now and then.

Heroism sustained him for an hour. At the end of the hour his progress
round the room grew slower; and in passing by the table where she sat,
he had to steady himself with one hand. A cold sweat broke on his
forehead. He mopped it furtively. He had every reason to believe that
his appearance was repulsive; and, in the same painful instant in
which this conviction sank into him, she raised her head and he saw
that she was beautiful. The upward look revealed her. It was as if
some veil, soft but obscuring, had dropped from her face. As her eyes
scanned him gently, it occurred to him that she had probably never
before had an opportunity of intimately observing a gentleman
suffering from the remoter effects of intoxication.

"You look tired," she said. "Or are you ill?"

He stood shame-faced before her; for her eyes were more disconcerting
than when they had looked down on him from their height. They were
tranquil now, full of kind thought and innocence and candour. Of
innocence above all, a luminous innocence, a piercing purity. He was
troubled by her presence; but it was not so much her womanhood that
troubled him as the deep mystery of her youth.

He could not look at it as it looked at him; for in looking at it he
remembered last night and many nights before. Somehow it made him see
the things it could not see, his drunkenness, his folly, his passion,
the villainous naked body of his sin. And it was for their work, and
their marks upon him, that she pitied him.

"Have you had anything to _eat_?" said she.

"Oh, yes, thanks," he answered vaguely.

"When?"

"Well--as far as I can remember it was about eight o'clock last
night."

"Oh--how very thoughtless of me. I am so sorry."

"It's my own fault entirely. I wouldn't have mentioned it, except to
account for my stupidity."

She crosse