Left unfinished, hanging in mid air, the phrase suggested the vague phantasmal contingencies for which he could find no name.

“I am willing to take the risk.”

Her phrase too was satisfying.  Its generous amplitude covered him like a cloak.

“But we haven’t arranged anything about terms.”

No, they had not.  Was it in her adorable simplicity, or in the mere recklessness of her youth, that she engaged him first and talked about terms afterwards?  Or did she know an honest man when she saw one?  He took his note-book and pencil and made out an estimate with the rapidity of happy inspiration, a fantastic estimate, incredibly and ludicrously small.

“Then,” said she, “there will be your expenses.”

He had not thought of that difficulty; but he soared above it, still reckless and inspired.

“Expenses?  Oh, expenses are included.”

She considered the estimate with the prettiest pucker of her meditative brows.

“I don’t understand these things; but—­it seems very little.”

“Our usual charge.”

So swiftly did the wings of his inspiration carry him into the blue ideal, high above both verbal verity and the gross material fact.

She acquiesced, though with some reluctance.  “Well, and when do you think you can begin?”

“Whenever it’s most convenient to you.  I shall have to take a look round first.”

“You can do that at once.”

By this time he had forgotten that whatever he might have drunk he had eaten nothing since the dinner of last night.  He had ceased to feel faint and headachy and hungry, having reached that stage of faintness, headache and hunger when the body sheds its weight and seems to walk gloriously upon air, to be possessed of supernatural energy.  He went up and down library steps that were ladders, and stood perilously on the tops of them.  He walked round and round the walls, making calculations, till the library began to swing slowly round too, and a thin circle of grey mist swung with it.  And all the time he was obscurely aware of a delicate grey-clad figure going to and fro in the grey mist, or seated intent at the table, doing his work.  He felt that her eyes followed him now and then.

Heroism sustained him for an hour.  At the end of the hour his progress round the room grew slower; and in passing by the table where she sat, he had to steady himself with one hand.  A cold sweat broke on his forehead.  He mopped it furtively.  He had every reason to believe that his appearance was repulsive; and, in the same painful instant in which this conviction sank into him, she raised her head and he saw that she was beautiful.  The upward look revealed her.  It was as if some veil, soft but obscuring, had dropped from her face.  As her eyes scanned him gently, it occurred to him that she had probably never before had an opportunity of intimately observing a gentleman suffering from the remoter effects of intoxication.