At that she would draw her cold hands across her hot brow, and wonder why she should think so malignantly of one who had been so kind—­so much kinder than anybody else had ever been to her, although she had no claim upon him.  Yet she knew that no argument could alter the fixed opinion of her spirit that Yaverland’s kingly progress through the world, which a short time ago she had watched with such a singing of the veins as she knew when she saw lightning, was an insult to her lesser height, her contemned sex, her obscurity.  The chaos in herself amazed her.  The glass showed her that she was very pale, and she wondered if such pallor was a sign of madness.  “I will not go daft!” she whimpered, and began rubbing her cheeks with her knuckles to bring back the colour; and saw among the quiet reflected things the queer face, its features pulled every way with derision, of Mr. Philip.

He said twangingly, “Ten minutes past nine, Miss Melville!”

Her heart was bursting with the thought of what made-up tales of vanity he would spin from this.  “Later than that.  Later than that,” she told him wildly.  “And I have been here since dear knows when, and there is nobody ready to give me work.”

He shot out a finger.  “What’s that by your machine?”

She noticed that his finger was shaking, and that he too was very pale, and she forgot to feel rage or anything but immeasurable despair that she should have to live in this world where everyone was either inscrutably cruel or mad.  She murmured levelly, dreamily, “Why, papers that you have just put down.  I will type them at once.  I will type them at once.”

For a time he stood behind her at the hearth, breathing snortingly, and at times seeming to laugh; said in a half-voice, “A fire fit to roast an ox!” and for a space was busy moving lumps of coal down into the grate.  A silence followed before he came to the other side of her table and said, “Stop that noise.  I want to speak to you.”  The gesture was rude, but it was picoteed with a faint edge of pitifulness.  The way he put his hand to his head suggested that he was in pain, so she shifted her hands from the keys and looked up vigilantly, prepared to be kind if he had need of it, for of course people in pain did not know what they were doing.  But since there was no sense in letting people think they could just bite one’s head off and nothing to pay, she said with spirit, “But it’s ten minutes past nine, and what’s this by my machine?”

Mr. Philip bowed his head with an air of meekness; he seemed to sway under the burden of his extreme humility, to be feeling sick under the strain of his extreme forbearance.  He went on in a voice which implied that he was forgiving her freely for an orgy of impertinence.  “Will you please take a note, Miss Melville, that Mr. Mactavish James wants to speak to you this afternoon?”

“He usually does,” replied Ellen.