Widdershins

tter had she kept her beliefs to herself. No man does a thing better for having his confidence damped at the outset, and to speak of difficulties is in a sense to make them. Speech

to the completion of

r finish Romilly here." ... Why not? Was this her idea of the luxury that saps the springs of action and brings a man down to indolence and dropping out of the

had remarked was not noticeable in the soft glow. The drawn chintz curtains-they had a flowered and trellised pattern, with baskets and oaten pipes-fell in long quiet folds to the window-seats; the rows of

placed her, marked a contrast of qualities. Assuming for the sake of argument the slightly ridiculous proposition that the room in which Oleron sat was characterised by a certain sparsity and lack of

in his thought. He even recognised now that he had noticed something odd at the time, and that unconsciously his attitude, even while she had been there, had been one of criticism. The mechanism of her was a little obvious; her melting humidity was the result of analysable pro

and weeks of afternoons-she, the good chum, on whose help he would have counted had all the rest of the world failed him-she, whose loyalty to

at moment he would have

his kitchen-the dripping of water from an imperfectly turned-off tap into the vessel beneath it. Mechanically he began to beat with his finger to the faintly heard falling of the drops; the tiny reg

s beyond that point. Their intellects diverged; there was no denying it; and, looking back, he was inclined to doubt whether there had been any real coincidence. True, he had read his writings to her and she had appeared to speak comprehendingly and to the point; but what can a man do who, having assumed that

again moved his finger to the

h she was the prototype-Romilly Bishop. And since he could say of Romilly what for very shame he could not say of Elsie,

moment he formulated his thought; Gulliver had described the Brobdingnagian maids-of-honour thus: and mentally and spiritually she corresponded-was unsensitive, limited, common. The model (he closed his eyes for a

houghts were to have been culled from his own finest, her form from his dearest dreams, and her setting wherever he could find one fit for her worth. He had brooded long b

dden chapters were w

softly moving

bestirre

was a blank; but one thing at a time; a man is not excused from taking the wrong course because th

ters, and read them over before h

s, and it was foolishly sweet and dulcimer-like. In his mind Oleron could see the gathering of each drop, its little tremble on the lip of the tap, and the tiny percussion of its fall, "Plink-plunk," minimise

to wakefulness, and Ole

the rims of the Sheffield sticks. Sluggishly he rose, yawned, went his nightly round

hich lay Oleron's bed; and then Oleron rose, put on his dressing-gown, and admitted her. He was not conscious that as he did so t

setto rose. "But that wi

not have heard it

ne?" Ole

ed, that you wa

in the flap of a lett

?... Sing it,

rett pru

ugh was the singer of our family; but the tune will be

leron, his thumb still i

dimpling and confus

harp, Mr. Oleron, and it will

as singi

would not be likel

tance struck him as more odd than he would have admitted to himself. The phrase he had humme