“I thought it would please you, Grizel.”

“Why should pretence please me?” She rose suddenly, in a white heat.  “You don’t mean to say that you think I am afraid of you still?”

He said No a moment too late.  He knew it was too late.

“Don’t be angry with me, Grizel,” he begged her, earnestly.  “I am so glad I was mistaken.  It made me miserable.  I have been a terrible blunderer, but I mean well; I misread your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

“They have always seemed to be watching me, and often there was such a wistful look in them—­it reminded me of the past.”

“You thought I was still afraid of you!  Say it,” said Grizel, stamping her foot.  But he would not say it.  It was not merely fear that he thought he had seen in her eyes, you remember.  This was still his comfort, and, I suppose, it gave the touch of complacency to his face that made Grizel merciless.  She did not mean to be merciless, but only to tell the truth.  If some of her words were scornful, there was sadness in her voice all the time, instead of triumph.  “For years and years,” she said, standing straight as an elvint, “I have been able to laugh at all the ignorant fears of my childhood; and if you don’t know why I have watched you and been unable to help watching you since you came back, I shall tell you.  But I think you might have guessed, you who write books about women.  It is because I liked you when you were a boy.  You were often horrid, but you were my first friend when every other person was against me.  You let me play with you when no other boy or girl would let me play.  And so, all the time you have been away, I have been hoping that you were growing into a noble man; and when you came back, I watched to see whether you were the noble man I wanted you so much to be, and you are not.  Do you see now why my eyes look wistful?  It is because I wanted to admire you, and I can’t.”

She went away, and the great authority on women raged about the room.  Oh, but he was galled!  There had been five feet nine of him, but he was shrinking.  By and by the red light came into his eyes.

CHAPTER IX

GALLANT BEHAVIOUR OF T. SANDYS

There were now no fewer than three men engaged, each in his own way, in the siege of Grizel, nothing in common between them except insulted vanity.  One was a broken fellow who took for granted that she preferred to pass him by in the street.  His bow was also an apology to her for his existence.  He not only knew that she thought him wholly despicable, but agreed with her.  In the long ago (yesterday, for instance) he had been happy, courted, esteemed; he had even esteemed himself, and so done useful work in the world.  But she had flung him to earth so heavily that he had made a hole in it out of which he could never climb.  There he lay damned, hers the glory of destroying him—­he hoped she was proud of her handiwork.  That was one Thomas