cried the crowd. 'I intended the sovereign for you,' said Osborne, more composedly. 'Please let me pass.' 'Oh, did you, sir? Thank you, sir,' said the man, touching his hat to Osborne and Miss Gordon. 'Much obliged to you, and I'll drink the lady's health and your own.' He backed to his cab, looked at them as they entered the hall, and said confidentially to the off-wheel, 'You don't often pick up a fare like that about the Abbey. You get your half-crown, and maybe a crown now and then. I didn't see they was spoons at first. I'm not half sharp enough for picking up a living in this world, I ain't. You never know what luck you are going to get out of the railway stations; but out of the Abbey a sovereign for a shilling! Well, I'm blowed!' When they were in the vestibule Miss Gordon turned to Osborne, and said, – 'Why did you take that man's number, and why did you give him a sovereign?' 'You told me the other evening I was a poet. I mean to try to be a poet now and then; and the first thing I shall write will be "A Sonnet to Hansom Cab No. 1136." Does that answer both questions?' 'Yes; but the sovereign was extravagant. 'But poets are never prudent; and when a poet falls in-' 'A hansom.' They had gained the dining-room and sat down. 'When a poet falls in a hansom, why, you cannot expect him to peddle like a second-hand-clothes dealer.' 'Still I think the sovereign too much. How much a year have you?' 'About fifteen hundred, out of money recently left me,' he answered. He thought: 'What other girl in all the world would ask a man such a question under the circumstances?' 'Oh, I did not think you had so much! A bachelor with fifteen hundred a year ought not to wear such clumsy clothes and such long hair. You must get your hair shortened, wear a dark-blue frock-coat made by a good man, and an Oxford-blue tie. Blue suits you. I don't insist on patent-leather boots and gaiters, but they make an improvement. Your dress and hair led me to think you had not more than four or five hundred a year. You'd look very well in evening dress. All you light-bearded, high-foreheaded, square-faced, light-haired men look well in evening dress. My horror is a dark man-a man with black hair, a low forehead, heavy eyebrows, and black hair all over his face-in an open waistcoat and tailed coat. He looks as if the black of his coat had crawled up his poll and run down his face.' 'Will you have some potato?' 'No, thank you. I never eat potato with sole. The idea is barbarous. Have you never observed that potato and sole are very like in flavour? They are, and the idea of drowning two delicate flavours in one another is atrocious. It would be like helping seakale and vegetable-marrow as fish and vegetable. The art of eating is in its infancy.' There was a long silence, 'All the world is made of my joy,' thought Osborne. 'This great room, these bright tables, these polite waiters-all are made of my joy. My joy lifts the desolation of winter from the land, and floods the world with the warm level sunshine of evening. My joy, my glory, my fate, my love! My Jove! What were all the argosies of Hamburg or of Venice compared to you? What are all the riches of London compared to you? The value of riches is in spending them; this joy I have neither diminishes nor changes. It builds heavens above the skies, and glorifies the sordid things of earth.' 'Are you aware you are attracting a good deal of attention towards us?' she asked, breaking in suddenly on his thoughts. 'Good gracious, no! How?' he exclaimed, in great discomfiture. 'By staring at me in that way.' 'I beg your pardon. I am sorry. Pray forgive me?' 'I do not mind it in the least. I am used to being stared at, and don't mind it a bit; but I thought you would not like it.' 'I am very much obliged to you for telling me. I promise you not to do it again.' 'Oh, I don't mind it at all! I rather like it.' 'Rather like being stared at, so as to attract the attention of a common room like this! You are not serious?' 'Perfectly,' she said, with a placid smile. 'But what earthly pleasure can it give you to have a number of eyes fixed upon you?' 'Did you ever notice that people are disposed to stare at a pretty woman?' 'Certainly. That goes without saying.' 'When a handsome man and woman, like you and me, are in a public place like this, people cannot help staring.' 'I wish you would give up saying such things.' 'All I have said is quite true. Well, when there are a good-looking man and woman in a room like this, and all the people are looking at them, if the man lifts his head and looks round, all the men drop their eyes, because they do not wish to displease the man by staring at his companion; if the woman looks up, all the women drop their heads, because they do not wish to let her see how they envy her.' 'Envy her! How can you say such an uncharitable thing, Miss Gordon?' he asked, with an expression of serious disturbance on his face. 'Ah,' she sighed, 'you are very young! Wait until you are as old as I am, and you will know what I have said is true. You may take my word for it in the meantime.' She looked lazily around her, and when she had completed a survey of the room, she said, 'I do feel so much better than when I was in that chilly Abbey. Don't you?' 'I feel much happier. But you must not hold such very unpleasant views of your sex. I reverence it, and I must teach you to think as I think.' 'I wish you could. It is much more pleasant to think well than to think poorly of people. But what are you to do when you are sure you are right?' 'Keep your mind still open to conviction.' 'I do. There is no one in the world less bigoted than I.' 'I know very few women. The few I do know are, I am sure, above such a feeling of vulgar jealousy.' 'I congratulate you if it is so. It may be, perhaps, that you have had no opportunity of getting at the real character of women. You may not have been brought close enough to them for a long enough time.' 'I am perfectly sure,' he said gravely; 'you, for instance, are incapable of such a paltry sentiment.' 'You are quite right. But I am an exception, a very rare exception.' 'And why are you an exception? What is the cause of your being an exception?' 'Because,' she said, with deliberation, 'the homage of no man has up to this interested me; and I always feel quite independent of men; and if I do flirt it is only because I have not an amusing book, or a liking to play and sing, or fine castles to build in the air.' He looked at her with pain mingled with astonishment. 'I don't like you to say such things. There is an ungentleness about them that does not become you. I wish you would adopt a more sober style. Believe me, all the world cannot be wrong and you right; and nearly all the world-all the wisdom of the world, at all events-is against you.' 'But am I to be a hypocrite, or am I to be what I am?' 'You should try to be what you ought to be.' 'Conventional?' 'Well, I would rather see you conventional than as you are. Conventionalism is the accumulated tradition of vast experience; and anyone who throws it over runs a great risk of falling into ways he has no knowledge of, and through which he can find no guide.' Osborne was scarcely looking at her as he spoke. She was looking at him intently, with all the faculties of her nature fixed on him. 'Do you know,' she said, 'you are talking awful rubbish? But you look your best when you maunder.' He started, coloured, glanced around him hastily, and taking up the bill of fare, said, – 'I am the worst of caterers, Miss Gordon. What sweet do you like? Will you look at the bill and select?' She turned her grave, sweet eyes upon him, and whispered softly, – 'If you please, Mr Osborne, as this must serve for my dinner, I should like a small piece of joint. I have had only one tiny piece of sole and a little soup since breakfast, and it's now nearly four o'clock.' 'Good gracious, I must have been dreaming! Waiter!' 'You look very well asleep.' Osborne said to the waiter, 'Roast beef.' 'When the waiter has brought the beef are you likely to fall asleep again?' 'I thought you said I talked nonsense.' 'Yes, you did. But I don't mind what you say. I like to look at you when you talk that kind of rubbish. It's like seeing a panorama to music. You look at the panorama, and don't mind the music a bit.' His eyes dwelt on her with a wistful sadness. She was looking like a woman whose heart would melt at the first touch of enthusiasm or love, and she was talking like a machine. How was this? What could it mean? What could cause the antagonism between the spirit in the eyes and the spirit in the words? He shook his head sadly, and was silent awhile. She spoke again, – 'You told me you had sisters: how many?' 'Two,' he answered wearily, keeping his glance on the cloth. He thought, 'How different they are from you! How shocked they would be to see any girl act and speak as you do! And yet-and yet I-I have asked this woman to be my wife, and in a month I shall know whether she will or not! They never could endure her. They would not walk with her, or sit with her. They would be horrified at every trait in her character. What am I doing? What have I done? Two days ago I told myself I did not want her or her love, and I have proposed to her to-day! What is the matter with me? I used to be a firm man; now I am as fickle as the wind. Perhaps she will refuse me after all. There is one thing certain, whether I marry her or not, I can never introduce her at home.' 'Busy on that sonnet to No. 1136?' He raised his face quickly. She was smiling gently, confidentially at him. This 1136 was a lover's joke, a lover's secret, the first of the kind he had ever had. What a warmth ran through all his nature, at the thought of having a secret with the owner of that soft figure, the owner of that beautiful face, and with the spirit of those dark eyes! They two, she and he, intimate already; bound round by a secret; separated
