At the end of the week, coming up from Fleet Street, instead of making straight for the Hampstead Road as he ought to have done, he found himself turning aside in the direction of Tavistock Place.  The excuse that he made to himself was that he wanted a book that he had left behind at Mrs. Downey’s.  Now it was not in the least likely that he had left it in the dining-room, nor yet in the drawing-room, but it was in those places that he thought of looking first.  Not finding what he wanted, he went on dejectedly to the second floor, feeling that he must fulfil the quest that justified his presence.  And there in his study, in, yes, in it, as far in as anybody could get, by the bookcase next the window, Flossie was sitting; and sitting (if you could believe it) on the floor; sitting and moving her hands along the shelves as familiarly as you please.  Good Heavens! if she wasn’t busy dusting his books!

Flossie didn’t see him, for she had her back to the door; and he stood there on the threshold for a second, just looking at her.  She wore a loose dark-blue overall evidently intended to wrap her up and conceal her.  But so far from concealing her, the overall, tucked in and smoothed out, and altogether adorably moulded by her crouching attitude, betrayed the full but tender outline of her body.  Her face, all but the white curve of her cheek and forehead, was hidden from him, but he could see the ivory bistre at the nape of her bowed neck, with the delicate black tendrils of her curls clustering above it.  Her throat, as she stooped over her task, was puckered and gathered, like some incredibly soft stuff, in little folds under her chin.  He drew in his breath with a sighing sound which to Flossie was the first intimation of his presence.

To say that Flossie rose to her feet would be a misleading description of her method.  She held on to the edge of a bookshelf by the tips of her fingers and drew herself up from the floor, slowly, as it were by some mysterious unfolding process, not ungraceful.  She turned on him the wide half-mischievous, half-frightened eyes of a child caught this time in some superb enormity.

“Flossie,” he said with an affectation of severity, “what have you been doing?”

She produced her duster gingerly.  “You can see,” said she, “only I didn’t mean you to catch me at it.”  She knelt down by the fireplace and gave her duster a little flick up the chimney.  “I never, never in all my life saw such a lot of dust.  I can’t think how you’ve gone on living with it.”

He smiled.  “No more can I, Flossie.  I don’t know how I did it.”

“Well, you haven’t got to do it, now.  It’s all perfectly sweet and clean.”

“It’s all perfectly sweet, I know that, dear.”  She turned towards the door but not without a dissatisfied look back at the bookcase she had left.  “Aren’t you going to let me thank you?”

“You needn’t.  I was only helping Mrs. Downey.”