She thought, “I can’t go back now.”

He came sheepishly to the front door and asked her to walk in.

“Who’d have thought of seeing you?” he exclaimed.  “You must take me as I am.  I’ve only just moved in.”

“I’ve been to your old address,” she said, smiling, with an attempt at animation.

“A rare row I had there!” he murmured.

She understood, with a pang of compassion and yet with feminine disdain, the horrible thing that his daily existence was.  No wonder he would never allow Mrs. Maldon to go and see him!  The spectacle of his secret squalor would have desolated the old lady.

“Don’t take any notice of all this,” he said apologetically, as he preceded her into the room where she had seen him standing.  “I’m not straight yet....  Not that it matters.  By the way, take a seat, will you?”

Rachel courageously sat down.

Just as there were no curtains to the windows, so there was no carpet on the planked floor.  A few pieces of new, cheap, ignoble furniture half filled the room.  In one corner was a sofa-bedstead covered with an army blanket, in the middle a crimson-legged deal table, partly covered with a dirty cloth, and on the cloth were several apples, an orange, and a hunk of brown bread—­his meal.  Although he had only just “moved in,” dust had had time to settle thickly on all the furniture.  No pictures of any kind hid the huge sunflower that made the pattern of the wall-paper.  In the hearth, which lacked a fender, a small fire was expiring.

“Ye see,” said Julian, “I only eat when I’m hungry.  It’s a good plan.  So I’m eating now.  I’ve turned vegetarian.  There’s naught like it.  I’ve chucked all that guzzling an swilling business.  It’s no good.  I never touch a drop of liquor, nor a morsel of fleshmeat.  Nor smoke, either.  When you come to think of it, smoking’s a disgusting habit.”

Rachel said, pleasantly, “But you were smoking last week, surely?”

“Ah!  But it’s since then.  I don’t mind telling you.  In fact, I meant to tell you, anyhow.  I’ve turned over a new leaf.  And it wasn’t too soon.  I’ve joined the Knype Ethical Society.  So there you are!” His voice grew defiant and fierce, as in the past, and he proceeded with his meal.

Rachel knew nothing of the Knype Ethical Society, except that in spite of its name it was regarded with unfriendly suspicion by the respectable as an illicit rival of churches and chapels and a haunt of dubious characters who, under high-sounding mottoes, were engaged in the wicked scheme of setting class against class.  She had accepted the general verdict on the Knype Ethical Society.  And now she was confirmed in it.  As she gazed at Julian Maldon in that dreadful interior, chewing apples and brown bread and sucking oranges, only when he felt hungry, she loathed the Knype Ethical Society.  It was nothing to her that the Knype Ethical Society was responsible for a religious and majestic act in Julian Maldon—­the act of turning over a new leaf.