for their casual society, hard, cruelly clever in conversation, efficient in certain directions, but hating any sustained effort, and either socially or artistically or politically snobbish.  Snobs all!  Money-worshippers all!...  Well, nearly all!  It mattered not whether you were one of the dandies or one of the hatless or Fletcherite corps that lolled on foot or on bicycles, or shot on motor-cycles, through the prim streets of the suburb—­the young women would not remain in dalliance with you for the mere sake of your beautiful eyes.  Because they were girls they would take all that you had and more, and give you nothing but insolence or condescension in exchange.  Such was Louis’ judgment, and scores of times he had confirmed it in private saloon-lounge talk with his compeers.  It had not, however, rendered the society of these unconscionable and cold female creatures distasteful to him.  Not a bit!  He had even sought it and been ready to pay for that society in the correct manner—­even to imperturbably beggaring himself of his final sixpence in order to do the honours of the latest cinema.  Only, he had a sense of human superiority.  It certainly did not occur to him that in the victimized young men there might exist faults which complemented those of the parasitic young women.

And now he contrasted these young women with Rachel!  And he fell into a dreamy mood of delight in her....  Her gesture in lighting his cigarette!  Marvellous!  Tear-compelling!...  Flippancy dropped away from him....  She liked him.  With the most alluring innocence, she did not conceal that she liked him.  He remembered that the last time he called at his aunt’s he had remarked something strange, something disturbing, in Rachel’s candid demeanour towards himself.  He had made an impression on her!  He had given her the lightning-stroke!  No shadow of a doubt as to his own worthiness crossed his mind.

What did cross his mind was that she was not quite of his own class.  In the suburb, where “sets” are divided one from another by unscalable barriers, she could not have aspired to him.  But in the kitchen, now become the most beautiful and agreeable and romantic interior that he had ever seen—­in the kitchen he could somehow perceive with absolute clearness that the snobbery of caste was silly, negligible, laughable, contemptible.  Yes, he could perceive all that!  Life in the kitchen seemed ideal—­life with that loyalty and that candour and that charm and that lovely seriousness!  Moreover, he could teach her.  She had already blossomed—­in a fortnight.  She was blossoming.  She would blossom further.

Odd that, when he had threatened to pull out a revolver, she, so accustomed to revolvers, should have taken a girlish alarm!  That queer detail of her behaviour was extraordinarily seductive.  But far beyond everything else it was the grand loyalty of her nature that drew him.  He wanted to sink into it as into a bed of down.  He really needed it.  Enveloped in that loving loyalty of a creature who gave all and demanded nothing, he felt that he could truly be his best self, that he could work marvels.  His eyes were moist with righteous ardour.