The slatternly general servant reappeared with the chops and tinned salmon he had asked Madam Gadow to prepare for them.  He went and stared out of the window, heard the door close behind the girl, and turned at a sound as Ethel appeared shyly through the folding-doors.

She was suddenly domestic.  Hitherto he had seen her without a hat and jacket only on one indistinct dramatic occasion.  Now she wore a little blouse of soft, dark red material, with a white froth about the wrists and that pretty neck of hers.  And her hair was a new wonderland of curls and soft strands.  How delicate she looked and sweet as she stood hesitating there.  These gracious moments in life!  He took two steps and held out his arms.  She glanced at the closed door of the room and came flitting towards him....

CHAPTER XXII.

EPITHALAMY.

For three indelible days Lewisham’s existence was a fabric of fine emotions, life was too wonderful and beautiful for any doubts or forethought.  To be with Ethel was perpetual delight—­she astonished this sisterless youngster with a thousand feminine niceties and refinements.  She shamed him for his strength and clumsiness.  And the light in her eyes and the warmth in her heart that lit them!

Even to be away from her was a wonder and in its way delightful.  He was no common Student, he was a man with a Secret Life.  To part from her on Monday near South Kensington station and go up Exhibition Road among all the fellows who lived in sordid, lonely lodgings and were boys to his day-old experience!  To neglect one’s work and sit back and dream of meeting again!  To slip off to the shady churchyard behind the Oratory when, or even a little before, the midday bell woke the great staircase to activity, and to meet a smiling face and hear a soft, voice saying sweet foolish things!  And after four another meeting and the walk home—­their own home.

No little form now went from him and flitted past a gas lamp down a foggy vista, taking his desire with her.  Never more was that to be.  Lewisham’s long hours in the laboratory were spent largely in a dreamy meditation, in—­to tell the truth—­the invention of foolish terms of endearment:  “Dear Wife,” “Dear Little Wife Thing,” “Sweetest Dearest Little Wife,” “Dillywings.”  A pretty employment!  And these are quite a fair specimen of his originality during those wonderful days.  A moment of heart-searching in that particular matter led to the discovery of hitherto undreamt-of kindred with Swift.  For Lewisham, like Swift and most other people, had hit upon, the Little Language.  Indeed it was a very foolish time.

Such section cutting as he did that third day of his married life—­and he did very little—­was a thing to marvel at.  Bindon, the botany professor, under the fresh shock of his performance, protested to a colleague in the grill room that never had a student been so foolishly overrated.