and draw back his innocent hand? That was what he had seen the errand
boy at Rickman's do, when he caught him eating lunch in a dark
passage. He always had compassion on that poor pariah and left him to
finish his meal in privacy; and with the same delicacy Miss Harden,
perceiving his agony, withdrew. He was aware that the incident had
marked him.

He stood exactly where he stood before. Expert knowledge was nothing.
Mere conversational dexterity was nothing. He could talk to her about
Euripides and Sophocles till all was blue; he could not blow his nose
before her, or eat and drink before her, like a gentleman, without
shame and fear.

They talked no more that evening.

CHAPTER XVI

At seven he again refused Miss Harden's hospitality and withdrew to
his hotel. He was to return before nine to let her know his decision,
and as yet he had done nothing towards thinking it out.

A letter had come for him by the evening post. It had been forwarded
from his rooms and ran thus.

"My dear Rickets:

"I haven't forgotten about your little supper, so mind you turn
up at our little pic-nic before Dicky drinks all the champagne.
It's going to be awfully select.

"Ever your own and nobody else's,

"Poppy Grace.

"P.S.--How is your poor head?"

There are many ways of being kind and that was Poppy's way. She wanted
to tell him not to be cut up about Wednesday night; that, whatever
Dicky Pilkington thought of his pretensions, she still reckoned him in
the number of the awfully select. And lest he should have deeper
grounds for uneasiness her postscript hinted in the most delicate
manner possible that she had not taken him seriously, attributing his
utterances to their true cause. And yet she was his own and nobody
else's. She was a good sort, Poppy, taking her all round.

He tried to think about Poppy and found it difficult. His mind
wandered; not into the realms of fancy, but into paths strange and
humiliating for a scholar and a poet. He caught himself murmuring,
"Harmouth--Harcombe--Homer--Harden." He had got them all right. He
never dreamed of--of dropping them when he wasn't excited. It was
only in the beaten tracks where his father had gone before him that he
was apt to slide. He was triumphant over Harmouth where he might have
tripped over Hammersmith. Homer and Hesiod were as safe with him as
with Horace Jewdwine. (He couldn't think how he had managed to come to
grief