ondon
three or four months later.

_That_ hadn't been a social relation; and truly, deep within his appeal
to himself to be remarkable, to be imperturbable and impenetrable, to
be in fact quite incomparable now, throbbed the intense vision of his
drawing out and draining dry the sensation he had begun to taste. He
would do it, moreover--that would be the refinement of his art--not only
without the betraying anxiety of a single question, but just even by
seeing her flounder (since she must, in a vagueness deeply disconcerting
to her) as to her real effect on him. She was distinctly floundering
by the time he had brought her--it had taken ten minutes--down to a
consciousness of absurd and twaddling topics, to the reported precarious
state, for instance, of the syndicate running the Bijou Theatre at the
Pierhead--all as an admonition that she might want him to want to know
why she was thus waiting on him, might want it for all she was
worth, before he had ceased to be so remarkable as not to ask her. He
didn't--and this assuredly was wondrous enough--want to do anything
worse to her than let her flounder; but he was willing to do that so
long as it mightn't prevent his seeing at least where _he_ was. He
seemed still to see where he was even at the minute that followed her
final break-off, clearly intended to be resolute, from make-believe
talk.

"I wonder if I might prevail on you to come to tea with me to-morrow at
five."

He didn't so much as answer it--though he could scarcely believe his
ears. To-morrow was Sunday, and the proposal referred, clearly, to the
custom of "five-o'clock" tea, known to him only by the contemporary
novel of manners and the catchy advertisement of table-linen. He had
never in his life been present at any such luxurious rite, but he was
offering practical indifference to it as a false mark of his sense that
his social relation had already risen to his chin. "I gave up my very
modest, but rather interesting little old book business, perhaps you
know, ever so long ago."

She floundered so that she could say nothing--meet _that_ with no
possible word; all the less too that his tone, casual and colourless,
wholly defied any apprehension of it as a reverse. Silence only came;
but after a moment she returned to her effort. "If you _can_ come I
shall be at home. To see you otherwise than thus was in fact what, as
I tell you, I came down for. But I leave it," she returned, "to your
feeling."

He