gnored it. He maintained a silence that was almost stern.

Mr. Rickman was undergoing a process of regeneration.

He would not have called it by so fine a name. In fact, in its earlier
stages he seemed to himself to be merely pushing to the point of mania
a strong predilection for personal cleanliness. He was first of all
possessed, recklessly, ruinously, by a passion for immaculate shirts.
He had telegraphed to Spinks to send down all of his linen that he
could lay his hands on; meanwhile he had supplied deficiencies at the
local haberdashers. At Mrs. Downey's there was a low standard for the
more slender particulars of the toilette, and Mr. Rickman had compared
favourably with his fellow-boarders. Now he looked back with
incredulity and horror to his former self. Since his person had been
brought into daily contact with Miss Harden he had begun to bestow on
it a solemn, almost religious care. In the matter of the pocket
handkerchief he practised an extreme ritual, permitting himself none
but the finest lawn, which he changed after the first trivial
crumpling. The pocket-handkerchief being thus glorified and exalted in
the hierarchy of dress, one source of painful misgiving was removed.

For the first few days he had been merely formal in this cult of the
person. Piety was appeased with external rites and symbols, with
changes of vestment, excessive lustrations, and the like. Now he had
grown earnest, uncompromising, in his religion; and consistency
entailed a further step. Clearly his person, the object of such
superstitious veneration, must be guarded from all unbecoming and
ridiculous accidents; such an accident, for instance, as getting
drunk. If you came to think of it, few things could be more
compromising to the person than that (Heavens! if Miss Harden had seen
it last Wednesday night!). And since any friendship with ladies of
doubtful character might be considered equally derogatory from its
dignity, he further resolved to eliminate (absolutely) Miss Poppy
Grace. He took no credit for these acts of renunciation. They seemed
to him no more morally meritorious than the removal of dust from his
coat sleeves, or of ink-stains from his hands.

But though he exterminated the devil in him with so light a touch, it
was gravely, tragically almost, that he turned to the expulsion of the
Cockney. Intoxication was an unlucky casualty; so, if you came to
think of it, was a violent infatuation for Miss Poppy Grace;
infi