ar the most brilliant
and beautiful girl of my acquaintance, but in imagination----"

And it was just there that the tactless waitress interrupted us so
rudely. It was in vain that I tried to lead him back to the subject.
Almost his last words to me that afternoon were:

"I suppose you don't happen to know what the time is?"

Nor did I. It was just an instance of his subtle intuition. He
understood me at once and without effort. Many men have made a hobby of
it for years and never been within three streets of it.

The clock at the post-office gave him the information he required, and,
raising his hat, he said: "Well, I must be getting on."

The whole of the man's life was in that sentence. Always, he was getting
on--and always with a compulsion, as of destiny, shoving behind.

Knowing my keen appreciation of art, of which I have always been a just
and unfailing critic, he took me on the following Saturday to see the
pictures. It was not a good show--too many comics for my taste, and I'd
seen the Charlie Chaplin one before. However, in the dim seclusion of
the two-shilling seats just as the eighteenth episode of "The Woman
Vampire" reached its most pathetic passage, and the girl at the piano
appropriately shifted to the harmonium, Hector asked me if I would marry
him.

(No, I shan't. I know I'm an autobiographer and that you have paid to
come in, but there are limits. You know how shy and retiring I am. No
nice girl would tell you what the man said or did on such an occasion,
or how she responded. There will be no details. And you ought to be
ashamed of yourself.)

But just one of Hector's observations struck me particularly: "You know,
Marge, there are not many girls in the laundry I would say as much to."

That statement of preference, admitting me as it were to a small circle
of the elect, meant very much to me. I could only reply that there were
some men I wouldn't even allow to take me to a cinema. I asked, and was
accorded, time for consideration.

I was face to face with the greatest problem of my life. There was, I
know, one great drawback to my marriage with Hector. An immense risk was
involved. When the end of this chapter is reached the reader will know
what the risk and drawback were.

At the same time, everybody knew well that Hector was marked out for a
great position. I had already, with a view to eventualities, had some
discussion with one of the Directors, Mr. Cashmere, whom I have already
q