Tenterhooks

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me. It had a sweet, old-fashioned face, with a very high forehead, blue eyes, and dark hair arranged in two festoons of plaits, turned up at the sides. It represented his mother in the ea

nk it over. He did not like to hurt her feelings by explaining, and when she relented and accepted him he couldn't bear to tell her the truth. He was absurdly tender-hearted, and he thought that, after all, it didn't matter so very much. The little house left him by his mother needed a mistress; he would probably marry somebody or other, anyhow; and she seemed such a harmless little thing. It would please her so much! When the hurried marriage had come to a pathetic end by her early death everyone was tragic about it except Aylmer. All his friends declared he was heart

ut trifles, jealous in matters of love-perhaps that is, after all, the type women really like best. It is sheer nonsense to say that women enjoy being tyrannised over. No doubt there are some who would rather be bullied than ignored. But the he

nds at a warm fire. Superficially susceptible and inclined to be experimental he had not the instinct of the collector and was devoid of fatuousness. But he could have had more genuine successes than all the Don Juans and Romeos and Fausts who ever climbed rope ladders. Besides his physical attraction he inspired a feeling of reliance. Women felt safe with h

hobbies, but he needed luxury in general of a kind, and especially the luxury of getting things in a hurry, his theory being that everything comes to the man who won't wait. He was not above detesting little material hardships. He was not the sort of man, for instance

use, but never for long. He had no pleasure in property; valuable possessions worried him, and after any amount of trouble to get some object of art he would often give it away the next week. For he really liked money only fo

could never wait even for a boy-messenger, but always sent his notes by taxi to wait for an a

ible. This time he felt completely bowled over. He

left a vague and lasting impression, or whatever the reason was, the moment he saw her he felt, with a curious mental sensation, as of something that fell into its place with a click ('?a y est!'), that she realised some half-forgotten dream. In fact, it

res (the worst kind), a mind-healer or a body-snatcher, a hockey-player or even a lady novelist, it would have been exactly the same; whatever she had been, mentally or morally, he would undoubtedly have fallen in love with her physically, at

*

y he felt that during his little visit his intense feeling had radiated, and not displeased-perhaps a little impressed-her. He could easily, he knew, form a friendshi

as the

ere was

e slightest chance of it. And, supposing even that he could? And here came in the delicacy and scruple of the man who had been married himself. He thought he wouldn't even wish to spoil, by the vulgarity of compromising, or by the shadow of a secret, the serenity of her face, the gay prettiness of that life. No, he wouldn't if he could. And yet how exciting it would be to rouse her from that cool composure. She was rather enigmatic. But he thought she could be roused. And she was so clever. How well she would carry it off! How she would never bore a man! And he suddenly imagined a day with her in the country.... Then he thought that his imagination was flying on far too fast. He decided not to be a hopeless fool, but just to go ahead, and talk to her, and get to know her; not to think too much about her. She needn't even know how he felt. To idolise her from a distan

ored her-he dressed with all the anxiety, joy and thrills of excitement of a boy of twenty; and no boy of twenty can ever feel these things as keenly or half as elaborately as a man nearly twice that age, since all the added

es, the valet, to whom he was a hero, venture

'I'm never ill. I think, Soames, I

aving the valet smiling

*

But he already knew perfectly well that his master had fallen in love last night, and h