t the second had made him thoughtful. Her very persistence
was characteristic. Perhaps after all she was in the right--he had
arrived too hastily at an ignoble conclusion. Her attitude towards him
was curiously unconventional; it was an attitude such as none of the
few women with whom he had ever been brought into contact would have
dreamed of assuming. But none the less it had for him a fascination
which he could not measure or define,--it had awakened a new
sensation, which, as a philosopher, he was anxious to probe. The
mysticism of his early morning wanderings seemed to him, as he walked
leisurely through the sunlit streets, in a sense ridiculous. After
all it was a little thing that he was going to do; he was going to
make, against his will, an afternoon call. To other men it would have
seemed less than nothing. Albeit he knew he was about to draw into his
life a new experience.

He rang the bell at Number 18, Large Street, and gave his card to the
trim little maidservant who opened the door. In a minute or two she
returned, and invited him to follow her upstairs; her mistress was in,
and would see him at once. She led the way up the broad staircase into
a room which could, perhaps, be most aptly described as a feminine
den. The walls, above the low bookshelves which bordered the whole
apartment, were hung with a medley of water-colours and photographs,
water-colours which a single glance showed him were good, and of the
school then most in vogue. The carpet was soft and thick, divans and
easy chairs filled with cushions were plentiful. By the side of one
of these, which bore signs of recent occupation, was a reading stand,
and upon it a Shakespeare, and a volume of his own critical essays.

To him, with all his senses quickened by an intense curiosity, there
seemed to hang about the atmosphere of the room that subtle odour of
femininity which, in the case of a man, would probably have been
represented by tobacco smoke. A Sevres jar of Neapolitan violets stood
upon the table near the divan. Henceforth the perfume of violets
seemed a thing apart from the perfume of all other flowers to the man
who stood there waiting, himself with a few of the light purple
blossoms in the buttonhole of his frock coat.

CHAPTER IV

She came to him so noiselessly, that for a moment or two he was
unaware of her entrance. There was neither the rustle of skirts nor
the sound of any movement to apprise him of it, yet he became