't lose your self-command with her; but I'd advise
you to be careful. The way in which you have been talking to me now
gives an impression of--well, almost brutality, that I didn't think was
in you."

I laughed contemptuously.

"Oh, you needn't be afraid of the word; I know there is a lot of it in
me. It's just that knowledge that enables me to keep it under. I know
if I had not kept myself, for the sake of the work, out of it, that I
should have led a brutish existence. However, you needn't think that I
am going to frighten Lucia. I have had such a deuce of a lot of
practice in patience and restraint, and all those fine things, that I
am quite sure of myself when I am with her. But as to gaining her
confidence, that is impossible before the ceremony, I believe. She has
been brought up in that monstrous idea, like the rest of our
fashionable girls, that the man into whose possession she is to give
herself utterly with the ceremony, up to the last moment before it, is
to be treated with the most absolute reserve. The contrast is too
ludicrous--driven to the point of exaggeration to which they drive it.
In Lucia's eyes an unusual, an unfashionable word, no matter how great
the necessity for it, is a crime. I believe she would walk to the block
rather than let a word pass her lips in my hearing an hour before our
marriage that in twenty-four hours afterwards might be a common phrase
between us. You may call it modesty and charming, if you like. All I
can say is, there are limits to its charm."

The approach of morning was distinct now. A grey light hung in a faint
misty veil over the Green Park and top of Piccadilly. As it fell from
the cloudy, neutral-tinted sky, it showed one solitary figure, a woman
with a trailing skirt and battered hat, passing Hyde Park corner.

In the waste of deserted street and roadway, glimmering in the dull,
grey light, that one dishevelled black figure reminded one of the
remnant of some wrecked vessel, drifting at dawn along a sullen coast.
She drifted somewhat faster up to us as we came to the corner and
touched Dick, who was next to the road, on the arm. He shook her hand
off without speaking.

"Have you any money with you, Dick?" I asked.

"Yes; but I am not going to give any to her," he answered.

I would have given the woman some, but I had none. I had left it behind
when I changed my clothes for dinner. She heard Dick's answer to me
plainly, and it exasperated her. All the natura