"I haven't done anything with it," said he, "I couldn't do anything with a hat like that."
"You've 'idden it somewhere."
He got up slowly, feigning a search, and produced what a minute ago had been Rose's hat.
It was an absurd thing of wire and net, Rose's hat, and it had collapsed irreparably.
"Well, I declare, if you haven't gone and sat on it."
"It looks as if I had. Can you forgive me?"
"Well—if it was an accident."
He looked down upon her tenderly.
"No, Rose, it was not an accident. I couldn't bear that hat."
He put his hand on her arm and raised her to her feet.
"And now," he said, "the only thing we can do is to go and get another one."
They went slowly back, she shamefaced and bareheaded, he leading her by the arm till they found themselves in Heath Street outside a magnificent hat-shop.
Chance took him there, for Rose, interrogated on the subject of hat-shops, was obstinately reticent.
But here, in this temple, in its wonderful window, before a curtain, on a stage, like actors in a gay drama, he saw hats; black hats and white hats; green and blue and rose-coloured hats; hats of all shapes and sizes; airily perched; laid upon velvet; veiled and unveiled; befeathered and beflowered. Hats of a beauty and a splendour before which Rose had stood many a time in awful contemplation, and had hurried past with eyes averted, leaving behind her the impermissible dream.
And now she had a thousand scruples about entering. He had hit, she said, on the most expensive shop in Hampstead. Miss Kentish wouldn't think of buying a hat there. No, she wouldn't have it. He must please, please, Mr. Tanqueray, let her buy herself a plain straw and trim it.
But he seized her by the arm and drew her in. And once in there was no more use resisting, it only made her look foolish.
Reality with its harsh conditions had vanished for a moment. It was like a funny dream to be there, in Madame Rodier's shop, with Mr. Tanqueray looking at her as she tried on innumerable hats, and Madame herself, serving her, putting the hats on the right way, and turning her round and round so that Mr. Tanqueray could observe the effect from every side of her.
Madame talked all the time to Mr. Tanqueray and ignored Rose.
Rose had a mortal longing for a rose-coloured hat, and Madame wouldn't let her have it. Madame, who understood Mr. Tanqueray's thoughts better than if he had expressed them, insisted on a plain black hat with a black feather.
"That's madame's hat, sir," said Madame. "We must keep her very simple."
"We must," said Tanqueray, with fervour. He thought he had never seen anything so enchanting in its simplicity as Rose's face under the broad black brim with its sweeping feather.
Rose had to wear the hat going home. Tanqueray carried the old one in a paper parcel.
At the gate of the corner house he paused and looked at his watch.
"We've half-an-hour yet before we need go in. I want to talk to you."
He led her through the willows, and up the green slope opposite the house. There was a bench on the top, and he made her sit on it beside him.
"I suppose," he said, "you think that when we go in I shall let you wait on me, and it'll be just the same as it was before?"
"Yes, sir. Just the same."
"It won't, Rose, it can't. You may wait on me to-night, but I shall go away to-morrow."
She turned her face to him, it was dumb with its trouble.
"Oh no—no, sir—don't go away."
"I must. But before I go, I want to ask you if you'll be my wife——"
The hands she held clasped in her lap gripped each other tight. Her mouth was set.
"I'm asking you now, Rose. To be my wife. My wife," he repeated fiercely, as if he repelled with violence a contrary suggestion.
"I can't be your wife, sir," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because," she said simply, "I'm not a lady."
At that Tanqueray cried, "Ah," as if she had hurt him.
"No, sir, I'm not, and you mustn't think of it."
"I shall think of nothing else, and talk of nothing else, until you say yes."
She shook her little head; and from the set of her chin he was aware of the extreme decision of her character.
He refrained from any speech. His hand sought hers, for he remembered how, just now, she had unbent at the holding of her hand.
But she drew it gently away.
"No," said she. "I look at it sensible. I can see how it is. You've been ill, and you're upset, and you don't know what you're doin'—sir."
"I do—madam."
She smiled and drew back her smile as she had drawn back her head. She was all for withdrawal.
Tanqueray in his attempt had let go the parcel that he held. She seized it in a practical, business-like manner which had the perfect touch of finality. Then she rose and went back to the house, and he followed her, still pleading, still protesting. But Rose made herself more than ever deaf and dumb. When he held the gate open for her she saw her advantage, darted in, and vanished (his divinity!) down the area steps.
She went up-stairs to her little garret, and there, first of all, she looked at herself in the glass. Her face was strange to her under the black hat with its sweeping feather. She shook her head severely at the person in the glass. She made her take off the hat with the feather and put it by with that veneration which attends the disposal of a best hat. The other one, the one with the roses, she patted and pulled and caressed affectionately, till she had got it back into something of the shape it had been, to serve for second best. Then she wished she had left it as it was.
She loved them both, the new one because he had given it her, and the old one because he had sat on it.
Finally she smoothed her hair to an extreme sleekness, put on a clean apron and went down-stairs.
In the evening she appeared to Tanqueray, punctual and subservient, wearing the same air of reticence and distance with which she had waited on him first. He was to see, it seemed to say, that she was only little Rose Eldred, his servant, to whom it was not proper that he should speak.
But he did speak. He put his back to the door she would have escaped by, and kept her prisoned there, utterly in his power.
Rose, thus besieged, delivered her ultimatum.
"Well," she said, "you take a year to think it over sensible."
"A year?"
"A year. And if you're in the same mind then as you are now, p'raps I won't say no."
"A year? But in a year I may be dead."
"You come to me," said Rose, "if you're dyin'."
"And you'll have me then?" he said savagely.
"Yes. I'll 'ave you then."
But, though all night Tanqueray by turns raged and languished, it was Rose who, in the morning, looked about to die. Not that he saw her. He never saw her all that day. And at evening he listened in vain for her call at the gate, her salutation to the night: "Min—Min—Minny! Puss—Puss—Puss!"
For in the afternoon Rose left the house, attended by her uncle, who carried by its cord her little trunk.
In her going forth she wore a clean white linen gown. She wore,