them into water to revive them."

She turned back again to her work, and the clicking of the machine began
anew. He leant to inhale the smell of the violets. Then, with a glance
at her bent head, he drew one from the bunch, and, taking a pocket-book
out of his coat-pocket, he opened it, and laid the violet between two of
its pages.

While he waited he looked about him. The ugliness of the room did not
affect him. The flaring gas, the business-like furniture, the unhomely
aspect of the place, did not depress him. On the contrary, in his eyes
it was pleasant. He always came to it with a sensation of happiness,
which was not lessened because he felt half-guilty about it. To him the
room was the room which for certain hours of every day contained Mary
Gray. What did it matter if the case was unlovely since it held her?

Presently the clicking of the machine ceased, and she looked up at him
with a smile.

"You are very good to wait for me," she said.

"Am I?" he answered, smiling back at her. "There is not very much to do
to-day. The House is not sitting, and my constituency has been less
exacting than usual."

She put the cover on her machine, locked up her desk, and then retired
into a corner, where she changed her shoes, putting her slippers away
tidily in a cupboard. She put on her hat, setting it straight before a
little glass that hung in one corner. She got into her little blue
jacket, with its neat collar and cuffs of astrachan. Then she came to
him, drawing on her gloves.

"I am quite ready now," she said.

They lowered the gas, and went down the stone steps side by side. At the
foot of the stairs Mary stopped to call into the depths of the back
premises that she was going home, and a woman's voice bade her
good-night.

It was cold in the street, and there was a light brown fog through which
the street lamps shone yellowly.

The omnibuses crept by quietly, in a long string, making a muffled sound
in the fog. As they went towards the nearest station a wind suddenly
blew in their faces.

"It is the west wind," she said. "And it breathes of the spring."

"There will be no fog to-night," he answered. "See, it is lifting. The
west wind will blow it away."

"It comes from fields and woods and mountains and the sea," she said
dreamily.

The fog was indeed disappearing. The gas-jets shone more clearly; the
'buses broke into a decorous trot. The long line of lights came out
suddenly, crossing each other l