“Never seen my rooms, have you?” he added.

“No; never expected to.”

“Come in and see them now and have a talk.”

“You don’t mean that?” Eagerness dragged it out of her.

“Come along,” he said; “they’re just down here—­in Regent Street.”

She followed him silently—­silently, but in that moment her spirits had lifted.  There was a wider swing in her walk.  But he took no notice of that; he was not observant.

She hummed a tune with a rather pretty voice as she walked up the flights of stairs behind him.

“Gosh! it’s dark,” she exclaimed.

“Oh, it’s none of your bachelor flats with lifts and attendants and electric lights,” he replied.

On the third landing she stopped—­out of breath again.

“Tired?” he said.

“There—­” she laid a hand on her chest and breathed heavily.  Then she moved a step nearer to him.

“Give us a kiss, dearie,” she whispered.

He retreated a step.  “My dear child—­I didn’t want you for that.  Come up to the next floor when you’ve got your breath.  I’ll go on and light the candles.”

He left her there in the semi-darkness, the thin light from the landing window just breaking up the heavy shadows.  When she heard him open the door upstairs, she moved close to the window, took a small mirror from her little reticule bag and gazed for a moment at her face in its reflection.  Then from some pocket of the bag, she produced a powder-puff and a box of powdered rouge, applying them with mechanical precision.

“S’pose he thought I looked tired,” she muttered to herself as she mounted the remaining flight of stairs.

The room was a bachelor’s, but it showed discrimination.  Everything was in good taste—­taste that was beyond her comprehension.  She stood there in the doorway and stared about her before she entered.  She thought the rush matting that covered the floor was cold; she thought the oak furniture sombre.  Without realizing the need for tact, she said so.

“You want a woman in here,” she said, thinking that she was paving the way for herself—­“to warm things up a bit—­you know what I mean—­make things more cosy.”

He put a chair out for her by the fire.  It had a rush-bottomed seat to it, and for the first few moments she worried about in it, trying vainly to make herself comfortable.

“What would you do?” he asked quietly, filling a well-burnt pipe from a tobacco-jar.

She took this as encouragement—­jumped to it, as an animal to the food above it.

“Do?  Well, first of all I’d have a nice thick carpet.”  There was no need to force the note of interest into her voice.  She was already absorbed with it.  She confidently thought that she could impress him with the comfort that she could bring into his life.  Her eyes, quick to grasp certain facts, had shown her that he lived alone.  Long study of men from certain standpoints