“Was he?  How about the Bacchae?  Of course, it’s worth all the rest of his plays put together; they’re not in the same street with it.  It’s a thing to dream about, to go mad about.”

“My grandfather says it’s not Euripidean.”  “Good Lord!  How do we know it isn’t the most Euripidean of the lot?”

“Well, it stands alone, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.  And he stands with it.”

“Does he?  My grandfather was judging him by his average.”

“His average?  Oh, I say, you know, you could reduce some very great poets to mediocrity by striking their average.  Wouldn’t you allow a man to be at least as great as his greatest achievement?”

“I wonder—­”

“Anyhow, those are ripping good notes in that edition.”

“They ought to be.  They were by a good scholar—­his greatest achievement.”

He put down the Harden Euripides; and it struck Lucia that if Sir Joseph had been there this truthful young man would not have hesitated to put him down too.  She laid her hand on the book with an air of possession and protection, which was a lesson in tact for the truthful young man.  He leaned up against the bookcase with his hands in his pockets.

“I say,” said he, “I hope you don’t mind my talking like this to you?”

“No.  Why shouldn’t you?”

“Well, it isn’t exactly what I’m here for.”

That exciting conversation had lasted barely fifteen minutes; but it had set him for the time being at his ease.  He had at any rate proved himself a scholar, and he was so far happier.  He felt that he was beginning to get on with Miss Harden, to see a little way across the gulf, discerning the outlines of the further shore where that high lady walked unveiled.

Then suddenly, owing to a most humiliating incident, the gulf yawned again.

It was five o’clock, and he was left alone in the company of a fascinating little tea-table, laid, as if for a guest, with fine white linen, silk embroidered, with early Georgian silver and old china.  It was laid for him, that little tea-table.  He had delayed a little before beginning his repast, and it happened that when Miss Harden appeared again she found him holding a tea-cup to his lips with one hand, while the other groped in a dish of cream cakes, abstractedly, and without the guidance of a selective eye.  Both eyes indeed were gazing dreamily over the rim of the tea-cup at her empty chair.  He was all right; so why, oh why did he turn brick-red and dash his cup down and draw back his innocent hand?  That was what he had seen the errand boy at Rickman’s do, when he caught him eating lunch in a dark passage.  He always had compassion on that poor pariah and left him to finish his meal in privacy; and with the same delicacy Miss Harden, perceiving his agony, withdrew.  He was aware that the incident had marked him.

He stood exactly where he stood before.  Expert knowledge was nothing.  Mere conversational dexterity was nothing.  He could talk to her about Euripides and Sophocles till all was blue; he could not blow his nose before her, or eat and drink before her, like a gentleman, without shame and fear.