Steps were heard along the hall; the door was opened; and the maid stood
aside to let him enter, the apron with which she had slipped the latch
still crumpled in her greasy hand. "Sorry, Daisy," the young man apologised, "but I didn't want to bring her
down all those stairs. How is she? Has she been out to-day?" The maid replied that the person spoken of had been out; and the young
man walked along the wide carpeted passage. It was cumbered like an antique-shop with alabaster busts on pedestals,
dusty palms in faience vases, and trophies of spears and shields and
assegais. At the foot of the stairs was a rustling portière of strung
beads, and beyond it the carpet was continued up the broad, easy flight,
secured at each step by a brass rod. Where the stairs made a turn, the
fading light of the December afternoon, made still dimmer by a window of
decalcomanied glass, shone on a cloudy green aquarium with sallow
goldfish, a number of cacti on a shabby console table, and a large and
dirty white sheepskin rug. Passing along a short landing, the young man
began the ascent of the second flight. This also was carpeted, but with a
carpet that had done duty in some dining- or bed-room before being cut up
into strips of the width of the narrow space between the wall and the
handrail. Then, as he still mounted, the young man's feet sounded loud on
oilcloth; and when he finally paused and knocked at a door it was on a
small landing of naked boards beneath the cold gleam of the skylight
above the well of the stairs. "Come in," a girl's voice called. The room he entered had a low sagging ceiling on which shone a low glow
of firelight, making colder still the patch of eastern sky beyond the
roofs and the cowls and hoods of chimneys framed by the square of the
single window. The glow on the ceiling was reflected dully in the old
dark mirror over the mantelpiece. An open door in the farther corner,
hampered with skirts and blouses, allowed a glimpse of the girl's
bedroom. The young man set the paper bag he carried down on the littered round
table and advanced to the girl who sat in an old wicker chair before
the fire. The girl did not turn her head as he kissed her cheek, and he
looked down at something that had muffled the sound of his steps as
he had approached her. "Hallo, that's new, isn't it, Bessie? Where did that come from?" he asked
cheerfully. The middle of the floor was covered with a common jute matting, but on
the hearth was a magnificent leopard-skin rug. "Mrs. Hepburn sent it up. There was a draught from under the door. It's
much warmer for my feet." "Very kind of Mrs. Hepburn. Well, how are you feeling to-day, old girl?" "Better, thanks, Ed." "That's the style. You'll be yourself again soon. Daisy says you've been
out to-day?" "Yes, I went for a walk. But not far; I went to the Museum and then sat
down. You're early, aren't you?" He turned away to get a chair, from which he had to move a mass of
tissue-paper patterns and buckram linings. He brought it to the rug. "Yes. I stopped last night late to cash up for Vedder, so he's staying
to-night. Turn and turn about. Well, tell us all about it, Bess." Their faces were red in the firelight. Hers had the prettiness that the
first glance almost exhausts, the prettiness, amazing in its quantity,
that one sees for a moment under the light of the street lamps when shops
and offices close for the day. She was short-nosed, pulpy-mouthed and
faunish-eyed, and only the rather remarkable smallness of the head on the
splendid thick throat saved her from ordinariness. He, too, might have
been seen in his thousands at the close of any day, hurrying home to
Catford or Walham Green or Tufnell Park to tea and an evening with a
girl or in a billiard-room, or else dining cheaply "up West" preparatory
to smoking cigarettes from yellow packets in the upper circle of a
music-hall. Four inches of white up-and-down collar encased his neck; and
as he lifted his trousers at the knee to clear his purple socks, the pair
of paper covers showed, that had protected his cuffs during the day at
the office. He removed them, crumpled them up and threw them on the fire;
and the momentary addition to the light of the upper chamber showed how
curd-white was that superb neck of hers and how moody and tired her eyes. From his face only one would have guessed, and guessed wrongly, that his
preferences were for billiard-rooms and music-halls. His conversation
showed them to be otherwise. It was of Polytechnic classes that he spoke,
and of the course of lectures in English literature that had just begun. And, as if somebody had asserted that the pursuit of such studies was not
compatible with a certain measure of physical development also, he
announced that he was not sure that he should not devote, say, half an
evening a week, on Wednesdays, to training in the gymnasium. "_Mens sana in corpore sano_, Bessie," he said; "a sound mind in a sound
body, you know. That's tremendously important, especially when a fellow
spends the day in a stuffy office. Yes, I think I shall give it half
Wednesdays, from eight-thirty to nine-thirty; sends you home in a glow. But I was going to tell you about the Literature Class. The second
lecture's to-night. The first was splendid, all about the languages of
Europe and Asia--what they call the Indo-Germanic languages, you know. Aryans. I can't tell you exactly without my notes, but the Hindoos and
Persians, I think it was, they crossed the Himalaya Mountains and spread
westward somehow, as far as Europe. That was the way it all began. It
was splendid, the way the lecturer put it. English is a Germanic
language, you know. Then came the Celts. I wish I'd brought my notes. I
see you've been reading; let's look--"

A book lay on her knees, its back warped by the heat of the fire. He took
it and opened it. "Ah, Keats! Glad you like Keats, Bessie. We needn't be great readers, but
it's important that what we do read should be all right. I don't know
him, not _really_ know him, that is. But he's quite all right--A1 in
fact. And he's an example of what I've always maintained, that knowledge
should be brought within the reach of all. It just shows. He was the son
of a livery-stable keeper, you know, so what he'd have been if he'd
really had chances, been to universities and so on, there's no knowing. But, of course, it's more from the historical standpoint that I'm
studying these things. Let's have a look--"

He opened the book where a hairpin between the leaves marked a place. The firelight glowed on the page, and he read, monotonously and
inelastically:

"_And as I sat, over the light blue hills
There came a noise of revellers; the rills
Into the wide stream came of purple hue--
  'Twas Bacchus and his crew! The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
From kissing cymbals made a merry din--
  'Twas Bacchus and his kin!