ties in every direction. She had not, I am convinced, any of the
notions of a crusader upon this popular subject, nor may I portray her
either shocked or revolted, only rather bored, being a creature whom it
was unkind to hamper; and she would have explained quite in these simple
terms the reason why Stephen Arnold's saving neutrality of temperament
was to her a pervasive charm of his society.

She had not yet felt at liberty to tell him that she could not classify
him, that she had never known any one like him before; and there was in
this no doubt a vague perception that the confession showed a limitation
of experience on her part for which he might be inclined to call her to
account, since cultured young Oxonians with an altruistic bias, if they
do not exactly abound, are still often enough to be discovered if one
happens to belong to the sphere which they haunt, they and their ideals.
Not that any such consideration led her to gloss or to minimise the
disabilities of her own. She sat sometimes in gravest wonder, pinching
her lips, and watched the studiously modified interest of his glance
following her into its queer by-ways--her sphere's--full of spangles and
lime-light, and the first-class hysteria of third-class rival artistry.
There was a fascination in bringing him out of his remoteness near to
those things, a speculation worth making as to what he might do. This
remained ungratified, for he never did anything. He only let it appear
by the most indefinite signs possible that he saw what she saw, peering
over his paling, and she in the picturesque tangle outside found it
enough.

He was there when she came back from the _Chronicle_ office, patient
under the blue umbrellas; he had brought her a book, and they had told
him she would not be long in returning. He had gone so far as to order
tea for her, and it was waiting with him. "Make it," she commanded; "why
haven't you had some already?" and while he bent over the battered
Britannia metal spout she sank into the nearest seat and let her hat
make a frame for her face against the back of it. She was too tired, she
said, to move, and her hands lay extended, one upon each arm of her
chair, with the air of being left there to be picked up at her
convenience. Arnold, over the tea-pot, agreed that walking in Calcutta
was an insidious pleasure--one gathered a lassitude--and brought her
cup. She looked at him for an instant as she took it.

"But I am not too tired to