ways
feels, you know, as if he'd got the body under the sofa. It's like
homicidal mania; the poor wretch may be cured, but he lives in terror
of an attack returning. He knows it doesn't matter what he is or what
he does; he may live like a saint or write like an archangel; but one
aitch omitted from his conversation will wreck him at the last."

"You needn't be afraid; you never omit them."

"You mean I never omit them now. But I did five years ago. I couldn't
help it. Everybody about me did it. The only difference between them
and me was that I knew it, and they didn't."

"You _were_ conscious of it, then?"

"Conscious? Do you know, that for every lapse of the sort in your
presence I suffered the torments of the damned? Do you suppose I
didn't know how terrible I was?"

She shook her head, this time with disapproval. "You shouldn't say
these things."

"Do you mean, I shouldn't say them, or shouldn't say them to you?"

"Well, I think you shouldn't say them to me. Don't you see that it
sounds as if I had done or said something to make you feel like that."

"You? Good Heavens! rather not! But whatever you said or did, I
couldn't help knowing how you thought of me."

"And how was that?"

"Well, as half a poet, you know, and half a hair-dresser."

"That's funny; but it's another of the things you shouldn't say.
Because you know it isn't true."

"I only say them because I want you to see how impossible it was."

"For me to help you?"

"Yes."

"I do see it. It _was_ impossible--but not for any of the reasons you
suppose. If it had been possible--"

"What then?"

"Then, perhaps, I needn't have felt so sorry and ashamed. You know I
really _am_ a little bit ashamed of having asked a great poet to be my
private secretary."

It was thus that she extricated herself from the embarrassing position
in which his clumsiness had placed her. For he saw what she meant when
she told him that he should not say these things to her. He had made
her feel that she ought to defend him from the charges he had brought
against himself, when she knew them to be true, when her gentleness
could only have spared him at the expense of her sincerity. How
beautifully she had turned it off. He refrained from the obvious
pretty speeches. His eyes had answered her.

"If you knew that you _had_ done something for me; not a little thing
but a great one--" He paused; and in the silence they heard the sound
of Flossie's feet coming up th