t her
furtively now and again, and blinking, as if looking at her hurt him.
Whenever she said anything he stared, with his mouth a little open,
breathing heavily.

She hadn't paid very much attention to him. Then, suddenly, as if
intrigued by his silence, she said:

"Who is the Heaven-afflicted idiot?"

I said, "Ask Mr. Jevons."

She did.

Jevons didn't answer her. He simply looked at her and blinked. Then he
looked away again.

"Come," I said, "you might finish what you were going to say."

"I don't know," he muttered, "that I was going to say anything--Oh
yes--that thing you sent me. Why the silly blighter should suppose it's
necessary to stick in a storm at sea when it's quite obvious he hasn't
seen one--he talks about a brig when he means a bark, and from the way he
navigates her you'd say the wind blew all ways at once in the Atlantic."

I said it might for all I knew; and I asked him if he'd ever seen a storm
at sea himself.

It seemed he had. He'd been ordered a sea-voyage for his health after his
spell of printing; and his uncle, who was a sea-captain, took him with
him to Hong-Kong in his ship. And he had been all through a cyclone in
the Pacific.

I got him--with some difficulty, for he had become extremely shy--I got
him to tell us about it.

He did. And by the time he had finished with us we had all been through a
cyclone in the Pacific.

It was too much. The little beast could talk almost as well as he wrote.
A fellow who can write like Tasker Jevons has no business to talk at all.

Viola left soon after six. He had outstayed her. I went downstairs with
her. When I came back to him he was still staring at the doorway she had
passed through.

"Who's that girl?" he said.

I said she was my typist.

He meditated, and brought out as the result: "Do you mind telling me how
much she charges you?"

I told him. He looked dejected.

"I can't afford her," he said presently. "No. I can't possibly afford
her. Not yet." He paused. "Do you mind giving me her address?"

"I thought you said you couldn't afford her?"

"I can't. Not yet. But I _will_ afford her. I will. I give myself
another--" He stopped. His mouth fell ajar, and I saw his lips moving as
he went through some inaudible calculation--"another six months."

He hid his face in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair.
Then, as if he conceived himself to be unobserved behind this shelter,
he let himself go; and I became the witn