g in a
mysteriously unreal fashion until I plunged, became talkative and made
a certain ease and interest. I told them of the schools, of my lodgings,
of Wimblehurst and my apprenticeship days. "There's a lot of this
Science about nowadays," Mr. Ramboat reflected; "but I sometimes wonder
a bit what good it is?"

I was young enough to be led into what he called "a bit of a
discussion," which Marion truncated before our voices became unduly
raised. "I dare say," she said, "there's much to be said on both sides."

I remember Marion's mother asked me what church I attended, and that
I replied evasively. After tea there was music and we sang hymns. I
doubted if I had a voice when this was proposed, but that was held to be
a trivial objection, and I found sitting close beside the sweep of
hair from Marion's brow had many compensations. I discovered her mother
sitting in the horsehair armchair and regarding us sentimentally. I went
for a walk with Marion towards Putney Bridge, and then there was more
singing and a supper of cold bacon and pie, after which Mr. Ramboat and
I smoked. During that walk, I remember, she told me the import of her
sketchings and copyings in the museum. A cousin of a friend of hers whom
she spoke of as Smithie, had developed an original business in a sort of
tea-gown garment which she called a Persian Robe, a plain sort of wrap
with a gaily embroidered yoke, and Marion went there and worked in the
busy times. In the times that weren't busy she designed novelties in
yokes by an assiduous use of eyes and note-book in the museum, and went
home and traced out the captured forms on the foundation material. "I
don't get much," said Marion, "but it's interesting, and in the busy
times we work all day. Of course the workgirls are dreadfully common,
but we don't say much to them. And Smithie talks enough for ten."

I quite understood the workgirls were dreadfully common.

I don't remember that the Walham Green menage and the quality of these
people, nor the light they threw on Marion, detracted in the slightest
degree at that time from the intent resolve that held me to make her
mine. I didn't like them. But I took them as part of the affair. Indeed,
on the whole, I think they threw her up by an effect of contrast; she
was so obviously controlling them, so consciously superior to them.

More and more of my time did I give to this passion that possessed me. I
began to think chiefly of ways of pleasing Marion