“Oh, I am!” George concurred.

The place was perfect, and he was determined to establish himself in it.  Nothing could baulk him.  A hitch would have desolated him completely.

“I may as well show you the basement while I’m about it,” said Mr. Haim.

“Do!” said George ardently.

They descended.  The host was very dignified, as invariably at the office, and his accent never lapsed from the absolute correctness of an educated Londoner.  His deportment gave distinction and safety even to the precipitous and mean basement stairs, which were of stone worn as by the knees of pilgrims in a crypt.  All kinds of irregular pipes ran about along the ceiling of the basement; some were covered by ancient layers of wall-paper and some were not; some were painted yellow, and some were painted grey, and some were not painted.  Mr. Haim exhibited first the kitchen.  George saw a morsel of red amber behind black bars, a white deal table and a black cat crouched on a corner of the table, a chair, and a tea-cloth drying over the back thereof.  He liked the scene; it reminded him of the Five Towns, and showed reassuringly—­if he needed reassurance, which he did not—­that all houses are the same at heart.  Then Mr. Haim, flashing a lamp-ray on the coal-hole and the area door as he turned, crossed the stone passage into the other basement room.

“This is our second sitting-room,” said Mr. Haim, entering.

There she was at work, rapt, exactly as George had seen her from the outside.  But now he saw the right side of her face instead of the left.  It was wonderful to him that within the space of a few minutes he should have developed from an absolute stranger to her into an acquaintance of the house, walking about in it, peering into its recesses, disturbing its secrets, which were hers.  But she remained as mysterious, as withdrawn and intangible, as ever.  And then she shifted round suddenly on the chair, and her absorbed, intent face softened into a most beautiful, simple smile—­a smile of welcome.  An astonishing and celestial change!...  She was not one of those queer girls, as perhaps she might have been.  She was a girl of natural impulses.  He smiled back, uplifted.

“My daughter designs bookbindings,” said Mr. Haim.  “Happens to be very busy to-night on something urgent.”

He advanced towards her, George following.

“Awfully good!” George murmured enthusiastically, and quite sincerely, though he was not at all in a condition to judge the design.  Strange, that he should come to the basement of an ordinary stock-size house in Alexandra Grove to see bookbindings in the making!  This was a design for a boy’s book.  He had possessed many such books.  But it had never occurred to him that the gay bindings of them were each the result of individual human thought and labour.  He pulled at his cigarette.

There was a sound of pushing and rattling outside.