er; and it was among the most romantic of
names. It completed the picture. She now seemed to be listening and
waiting, her attention on the unseen area door. He felt shy and yet
very happy alone with her. Voices were distinctly heard. Who was Mrs.
Lobley? Was Mr. Haim a little annoyed with his daughter, and was
Marguerite exquisitely defiant? Time hung. The situation was slightly
awkward, he thought. And it was obscure, alluring.... He stood there,
below the level of the street, shut in with those beings unknown,
provocative, and full of half-divined implications. And all Chelsea was
around him and all London around Chelsea.

"Father won't be a moment," said the girl. "It's only the charwoman."

"Oh! That's quite all right," he answered effusively, and turning to the
design: "The outlining of that lettering fairly beats me, you know."

"Not really!... I get that from father, of course."

Mr. Haim was famous in the office as a letterer.

She sat idly glancing at her own design, her plump, small hands lying in
the blue lap. George compared her, unspeakably to her advantage, with
the kind, coarse young woman at the chop-house, whom he had asked to
telephone to the Orgreaves for him, and for whom he had been conscious
of a faint penchant.

"I can't colour it by gaslight," said Marguerite Haim. "I shall have to
do that in the morning."

He imagined her at work again early in the morning. Within a week or so
he might be living in this house with this girl. He would be,--watching
her life! Seducing prospect, scarcely credible! He remembered having
heard when he first went to Lucas & Enwright's that old Haim was a
widower.

"Do excuse me," said Mr. Haim, urgently apologetic, reappearing.

A quarter of an hour later, George had left the house, having accepted
Mr. Haim's terms without the least argument. In five days he was to be
an inmate of No. 8 Alexandra Grove. The episode presented itself to him
as a vast, romantic adventure, staggering and enchanting. His luck
continued, for the rain-cloud was spent. He got into an Earl's Court
bus. The dimly perceived travellers in it seemed all of them in a new
sense to be romantic and mysterious.... "Yes," he thought, "I did say
good-night to her, but I didn't shake hands."

CHAPTER II

MARGUERITE

I

More than two months later George came into the office in Russell Square
an hour or so after his usual time. He had been to South Kensington
Museum to look up, for