And she opened her eyes and tears fell from them.  She cried quietly, without excitement and without shame.  She cried with absolute naturalness.  Her tears filled him with profound delight.  And in the exquisite subterranean intimacy of the kitchen, he saw with his eyes and felt with his arms how beautiful she was.  Her face, seen close, was incredibly soft and touching.  Her nose was the most wonderful nose ever witnessed.  He gloated upon her perfection.  For, literally, to him she was perfect.  With what dignity and with what a sense of justice she had behaved, in the studio, in the parlour, and here.  He was gloriously reassured as he realized how in their joint future he would be able to rely upon her fairness, her conscientiousness, her mere pleasantness which nothing could disturb.  Throughout the ordeal of the evening she had not once been ruffled.  She had not said an unkind word, nor given an unkind gesture, nor exhibited the least trace of resentment.  Then, she had taste, and she was talented.  But perhaps the greatest quality of all was her adorable beauty and charm.  And yet no!  The final attraction was that she trusted him, depended on him, cried in his embrace....  He loosed her with reluctance, and she deliciously wiped her eyes on his handkerchief, and he took her again.

“I suppose I must leave here too, now,” he said.

“Oh, George!” she exclaimed.  “You mustn’t!  Why should you?  I don’t want you to.”

“Don’t you?  Why?”

“Oh!  I don’t!  Truly.  You’ll be just as well looked after as if I was here.  I do hope you’ll stay.”

That settled it.  And Manresa Road was not far off.

She sat on the table and leaned against him a long time.  Then she said she must go upstairs to her room—­she had so much to do.  He could not forbid, because she was irresistible.  She extinguished the kitchen-lamp, and, side by side, they groped up the stairs to the first floor.  The cat nonchalantly passed them in the hall.

“Put the lights out here, will you, when you go to bed?” she whispered.  He felt flattered.

She offered her face....  The lovely thing slipped away upstairs with unimaginable, ravishing grace.  She vanished.  There was silence.  After a moment George could hear the clock ticking in the kitchen below.  He stood motionless, amid the dizzying memories of her glance, her gestures, the softness of her body.  What had happened to him was past belief.  He completely forgot the existence of the old man in love.

CHAPTER IV

THE LUNCHEON

I