feel I can," she said.

"Yes, when you feel like it," replied Albert.

"That's more it," said Arthur. "It's not the time. It's the
nervousness." Again Albert beamed at her sympathetically, and said:

"Oh, I'll hold you. You needn't be afraid."

"But I'm not afraid," she said.

"You won't _say_ you are," interposed Arthur. "Women's faults
mustn't be owned up to."

Alvina was beginning to feel quite dazed. Their mechanical,
overbearing way was something she was unaccustomed to. It was like
the jaws of a pair of insentient iron pincers. She rose, saying she
must go.

Albert rose also, and reached for his straw hat, with its coloured
band.

"I'll stroll up with you, if you don't mind," he said. And he took
his place at her side along the Knarborough Road, where everybody
turned to look. For, of course, he had a sort of fame in Woodhouse.
She went with him laughing and chatting. But she did not feel at all
comfortable. He seemed so pleased. Only he was not pleased with
_her_. He was pleased with himself on her account: inordinately
pleased with himself. In his world, as in a fish's, there was but
his own swimming self: and if he chanced to have something swimming
alongside and doing him credit, why, so much the more complacently
he smiled.

He walked stiff and erect, with his head pressed rather back, so
that he always seemed to be advancing from the head and shoulders,
in a flat kind of advance, horizontal. He did not seem to be walking
with his whole body. His manner was oddly gallant, with a gallantry
that completely missed the individual in the woman, circled round
her and flew home gratified to his own hive. The way he raised his
hat, the way he inclined and smiled flatly, even rather excitedly,
as he talked, was all a little discomforting and comical.

He left her at the shop door, saying:

"I shall see you again, I hope."

"Oh, yes," she replied, rattling the door anxiously, for it was
locked. She heard her father's step at last tripping down the shop.

"Good-evening, Mr. Houghton," said Albert suavely and with a certain
confidence, as James peered out.

"Oh, good-evening!" said James, letting Alvina pass, and shutting
the door in Albert's face.

"Who was that?" he asked her sharply.

"Albert Witham," she replied.

"What has _he_ got to do with you?" said James shrewishly.

"Nothing, I hope."

She fled into the obscurity of Manchester House, out of the grey
summer evening. The Withams threw