attitude for sewing, her own figure possessed the
sublimity of a woman's of the early world, spinning the thread of
fate--the sublimity possessed by many women of the present day who fall
into the attitude required by scrubbing or sewing. St. John looked at
her.

"I suppose you've never paid any a compliment in the course of your
life," he said irrelevantly.

"I spoil Ridley rather," Helen considered.

"I'm going to ask you point blank--do you like me?"

After a certain pause, she replied, "Yes, certainly."

"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "That's one mercy. You see," he continued
with emotion, "I'd rather you liked me than any one I've ever met."

"What about the five philosophers?" said Helen, with a laugh, stitching
firmly and swiftly at her canvas. "I wish you'd describe them."

Hirst had no particular wish to describe them, but when he began to
consider them he found himself soothed and strengthened. Far away to the
other side of the world as they were, in smoky rooms, and grey medieval
courts, they appeared remarkable figures, free-spoken men with whom one
could be at ease; incomparably more subtle in emotion than the people
here. They gave him, certainly, what no woman could give him, not Helen
even. Warming at the thought of them, he went on to lay his case before
Mrs. Ambrose. Should he stay on at Cambridge or should he go to the
Bar? One day he thought one thing, another day another. Helen listened
attentively. At last, without any preface, she pronounced her decision.

"Leave Cambridge and go to the Bar," she said. He pressed her for her
reasons.

"I think you'd enjoy London more," she said. It did not seem a very
subtle reason, but she appeared to think it sufficient. She looked at
him against the background of flowering magnolia. There was something
curious in the sight. Perhaps it was that the heavy wax-like flowers
were so smooth and inarticulate, and his face--he had thrown his hat
away, his hair was rumpled, he held his eye-glasses in his hand, so
that a red mark appeared on either side of his nose--was so worried and
garrulous. It was a beautiful bush, spreading very widely, and all the
time she had sat there talking she had been noticing the patches of
shade and the shape of the leaves, and the way the great white flowers
sat in the midst of the green. She had noticed it half-consciously,
nevertheless the pattern had become part of their talk. She laid down
her sewing, and began to walk up and d