At the back of her girlish mind was the desire to keep pace with Paul in his upward flight, so that he should not be ashamed of her when he sat upon the clouds in glory.

In awful secrecy she practised the social accomplishments which Paul brought home.

She loved her Saturday and Sunday excursions with Paul--of late they had gone far afield: the Tower, Greenwich, Richmond--exploring London and making splendid discoveries such as Westminster Abbey and a fourpenny tea garden at Putney.

She scarcely knew whether she cared for these things for themselves; but she saw them through Paul coloured by his vivid personality.

Once on Chelsea Bridge he had pointed out a peculiarly ugly stretch of low-tide mud, and said: "Look at that." She, by unprecedented chance, mistaking his tone, had replied: "How lovely!" And she had thought it lovely, until his stare of rebuke and wonderment brought disillusion and spurting tears, which for the life of him he could not understand.