hout her. Ranny, in his decency, considered that that wasn't
a reason; that they ought to stick it; that they ought to think of the
girl, and that of all the beastly things you could do to her, this was
the beastliest, because it tied her.

He had more than ever decided that it was so, as he lay in his attic
sleepless on his narrow iron bedstead, staring up at the steep slope of
the white-washed ceiling that leaned over him, pressed on him, and
threatened him; watching it glimmer and darken and glimmer again to the
dawn. He had put away from him the almost tangible vision of Winny lying
there, pretty as she would be, in her little white nightgown, and her
hair tossed over his pillow, perhaps, and he vowed that for Winny's sake
he would never do that thing.

As for the feeling he had unmistakably begun to have for Winny, he would
have to put that away, too, until he could afford to produce it.

It might also be wiser, for his own sake, to give up seeing her until he
could afford it; but to this pitch of abnegation Ranny, for all his
decency, couldn't rise.

Besides, he had to see her. He had to see her home.

* * * * *

And so he took his feeling and put it away, together with a certain
sachet, scented with violets, and having a pattern of violets on a
white-satin ground, and the word Violet going slantwise across it in
embroidery. He had bought it (from his mother) in the shop, to keep (he
said) in his drawer among his handkerchiefs. And in his drawer, among
his handkerchiefs, he kept it, wrapped tenderly in tissue paper. He
tried hard to forget that he had really bought it to give to Winny on
her birthday. He tried hard to forget his feeling, wrapped up and put
away with it. But he couldn't forget it; because every day his
handkerchiefs, impregnated with the scent of violets, gave out a whiff
that reminded him, and his feeling was inextricably entangled with that
whiff.

It was with him as he worked in his mahogany pen at Woolridge's. All day
a faint odor of violets clung to him and spread itself subtly about the
counting-house, and the fellows noticed it and sniffed. And, oh, how
they chaffed him. "Um-m-m. You been rolling in a bed of violets, Ranny?"
And "Oo-ooh, what price violets?" And "You might tell us her name, old
chappie, if you _won't_ give the address." Till his life was a burden to
him.

So to end the nuisance he took that sachet wrapped in tissue paper, and
put it i