when he was separated from her by
the entire length of the room; but their work required a certain
collaboration, and there were occasions when he was established near
her, when deliberately, in cold blood and of his own initiative, he
was compelled to speak to her. No language could describe the anguish
and difficulty of these approaches. His way was beset by obstacles and
perils, by traps and snares; and at every turn there waited for him
the shameful pitfall of the aitch. He whose easy courtesy charmed away
the shyness of Miss Flossie Walker, whose conversation (when he
deigned to converse) was the wonder and delight of the ladies of his
boarding-house, now blushed to hear himself speak. The tones of his
voice were hateful to him; he detected in them some subtle and
abominable quality that he had not observed before. How would they
appeal to Miss Harden? For this miserable consciousness of himself was
pervaded, transcended by his consciousness of her.

Of her beauty he grew every minute more aware. It was not of the
conspicuous and conquering kind; it carried no flaming banner of
triumphant sex; indeed, it demanded a kindred fineness of perception
to discern it, being yet vague with the softness of her youth. Her
hair was mere darkness without colour or flame, her face mere
whiteness without a flush; all her colour and her light were, where
her soul was, in her mouth and eyes. These showed more vivid for that
toneless setting; they dominated her face. However he looked at her
his gaze was led up to them. For the long dim lines of her body flowed
upwards from her feet like the curves of a slender flame, mingling,
aspiring, vanishing; the edges of her features were indistinct as the
edges of a flame. This effect of an upward sweep was repeated in the
tilt of her vivid mouth and emphasised by the arch of her eyebrows,
giving a faintly interrogative expression to her face. All this he
noticed. He noticed everything about her, from the fine curling
flame-like edges of her mouth and the flawless rim of her ears, to her
finger-tips and the slope of her small imperious feet. He caught every
inflection of her voice; without looking at her, he was aware of every
turn of her head, every movement of her eyelids; he watched with
furtive interest her way of touching and handling things, of rising
and sitting, of walking and being still. It was a new way, unlike
Poppy's way, or Flossie's way, or the way of any woman he had yet
se