She disappeared finally without a word: he heard her steps overhead, and then silence.
Then he had to attend to the Major a little more.
"It was easy enough to tell you," said that gentleman.
"How ?" "Oh, well, if nothing else, your clothes." "Aren't they shabby enough ?" The Major eyed him with half-closed lids, by the light of the single candle-end, stuck in its own wax on the mantelshelf.
"They're shabby enough, but they're the wrong sort.

There's the cut, first--though that doesn't settle it.

But these are gray flannel trousers, for one thing, and then the coat's not stout enough." "They might have been given me," said Frank, smiling.
"They fit you too well for that." "I'll change them when I get a chance," observed Frank.
"It would be as well," assented the Major.
* * * * * Somehow or another the sense of sordidness, which presently began to affect Frank so profoundly, descended on him for the first time that night.

He had managed, by his very solitariness hitherto, to escape it so far.

It had been possible to keep up a kind of pose so far; to imagine the adventure in the light of a very much prolonged and very realistic picnic.