felt as a girl feels when she commits her first
conscious indiscretion. She had done many things before which many
people would have called indiscreet, but that quality had not even
faintly belonged to them in her own mind; she had done them in perfect
good faith and with a remarkable absence of palpitation. This
superficially ingenuous proposal to walk around the colleges with Mr.
Ransom had really another colour; it deepened the ambiguity of her
position, by reason of a prevision which I shall presently mention. If
Olive was not to know that she had seen him, this extension of their
interview would double her secret. And yet, while she saw it grow--this
monstrous little mystery--she couldn't feel sorry that she was going out
with Olive's cousin. As I have already said, she had become nervous. She
went to put on her hat, but at the door of the room she stopped, turned
round, and presented herself to her visitor with a small spot in either
cheek, which had appeared there within the instant. "I have suggested
this, because it seems to me I ought to do something for you--in
return," she said. "It's nothing, simply sitting there with me. And we
haven't got anything else. This is our only hospitality. And the day
seems so splendid."

The modesty, the sweetness, of this little explanation, with a kind of
intimated desire, constituting almost an appeal, for rightness, which
seemed to pervade it, left a fragrance in the air after she had
vanished. Ransom walked up and down the room, with his hands in his
pockets, under the influence of it, without taking up even once the book
about Mrs. Foat. He occupied the time in asking himself by what
perversity of fate or of inclination such a charming creature was
ranting upon platforms and living in Olive Chancellor's pocket, or how a
ranter and sycophant could possibly be so engaging. And she was so
disturbingly beautiful, too. This last fact was not less evident when
she came down arranged for their walk. They left the house, and as they
proceeded he remembered that he had asked himself earlier how he could
do honour to such a combination of leisure and ethereal mildness as he
had waked up to that morning--a mildness that seemed the very breath of
his own latitude. This question was answered now; to do exactly what he
was doing at that moment was an observance sufficiently festive.

XXV

They passed through two or three small, short streets, which, with their
little wooden