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Alice looked not at him as she said these remarkable words but at the pink clock on the chimney-piece. She had the recklessness of physical weakness in her, she did not care what happened, if only one thing happened. If he would not take that lure, she was quite prepared to try him with another.‘I shall be obliged if you will. I have a certain reason for wishing it. It’s a rubbishy reason enough, and I needn’t bother you with it.’�

�Mrs Keeling looked positively roguish.{226}�

Well, he was not going to ask twice after one refusal of his favours, but, as the next week went by, he found the ‘sir’ and the dropped eyes altogether intolerable. These absolutely impersonal relationships were mysteriously worrying. She had shown herself a compatriot of the secret garden, and now she had retreated into the shell of the secretary again. This week the weather turned suddenly cold, and since there was no fireplace in her room, he invited her to sit at the table by the window in his, which was close to the central-heating hot-water pipes. A certain employer-sense of pride had come to his aid, and now he hardly ever glanced at her. But one day the whole card-house of this pride fell softly on the table, just as he took his hat and stick after the day’s work.‘Yes, my dear, and you from church. I sat in the nave, if you want to know, and came out before the sermon.’Alice could do better than give him little bits, thanks to her excellent memory and her practice this afternoon, and in addition to several Songs Without Words, gave him a couple of pretty solid slow movements out of Beethoven’s Sonatas. It was not altogether her fault that she went on so long, for once when she attempted to get up, he said quite aloud so that everybody could hear, ‘You naughty girl, sit down and play that other piece at once.’ But when eventually the concert came to a close, he pressed her hand for quite a considerable time behind the shelter of the piano, and said almost in a whisper, ‘Oh, such rest, such refreshment!’ Then instantly he became not so much the brisk man of the world as the brisk{61} boy of the world again, and playfully insisted on performing that remarkable duet called ‘Chopsticks’ with her, and made her promise that if Mr Keeling lost all his money, and she had to work for her living, she would give him lessons on the piano at seven-and-sixpence an hour. There was a little chaffering over this, for as a poor priest he said that he ought not to give more than five shillings an hour, while Mrs Keeling, joining in the pleasantries, urged Alice to charge ten. The only possible term to the argument seemed to be to split the difference and call it seven-and-sixpence, cash prepaid.... Mr Keeling was appealed to and thought that fair. But he thought it remarkably foolish also.

���

�He walked out with him into the square Gothic hall with its hideous tiles, its castellated chimney-piece, its painted wheelbarrow, its card-bearing crocodile, and observed Propert going towards the green-baize door that led to the kitchen passage.

‘Oh, that,’ she said. ‘Dear Julia; I hope we shall be great friends again, when I come back from Brighton. I shall be very glad to, I am sure.’‘Don’t go unless you wish,’ he said suddenly. ‘Give up the catalogue altogether if you like.’�

��Keeling felt a keen and secret enjoyment over this. He knew quite well what she must have seen, namely the fact that he was a yearly subscriber of ￡10, as set forth on the subscription board. He had no temptation whatever to tell her who was the anonymous donor of the new wing. She would hear that to-morrow, and in{238} the meantime would continue to consider him the donor of ￡10 a year. He liked that: he did not want any curtailment of it.

‘Such a scolding!’ he said. ‘She said I didn’t take sufficient care of myself, and naturally I told her that I had so many others to look after that I must take my turn with the rest. But when I told her that Mrs Keeling was going to take care of me this evening, she thought no more about the scones I hadn’t eaten! She knew I should be well looked after.’��

It was not only in matters of office work, of swift shorthand, of impeccable typewriting that she was of use to him. She guessed that he found in her a companionship that Mrs Keeling with her pearl-pendant and her propriety could not supply. Norah knew all about the pearl-pendant: Mrs Keeling had told her, as it wagged at her throat, that her husband had given it her on her birthday, and was it not handsome? It was tremendously handsome: there was no doubt whatever about that. But the pearl-pendant mattered to Norah exactly as much as did the cheque which she had just{197} been given. It mattered less, indeed: it did not express anything.‘No. He insisted on coming up to his work.’�