She muttered, “Well, just a drop!” and found herself laughing unhappily.

He passed her his glass.

“But what,” she asked in dismay, “will you drink from?”

Almost irritably he clicked his tongue, though he still smiled.  “Drink it up!  Drink it up!”

She raised the glass to her lips and set her head back that the sin might have swift progress, expecting the loveliest thing, like an ice, but warm and very worldly; and informed with solemn pleasure too, for such colours are spilt on marble floors when the sun sets behind cathedral windows, such colours come into the mind when great music is played or some deep voice speaks Shakespeare....

“Ach!” she screamed, and banged the glass down on the table.  “It’s horrid!  It draws the mouth!” She started up and stood rubbing her knuckles into her cheeks and twisting her lips.  She had never thought wine was like this.  It was not so much a drink as a blow in the mouth.  And yet somehow she felt ashamed of not liking it.  “The matron at school used to give us something for toothache that was as bad as this!” she said peevishly, and tears stood in her eyes.

Mr. Philip stood up, laughing.  The crisis of his pleasure in persuading her to do the thing which she hadn’t wanted to do was his joy that she hadn’t liked it when she had done it.  And suddenly one of the walls of the neat mental chamber in which he customarily stood fell in; by the light that streamed in upon him he perceived that his ecstasy was only just beginning.  At last he knew what he wanted to do.  With gusto he marked that Ellen too was conscious that the incident was not at its close, for she was still wringing her hands, though the taste of the wine must long have gone from her mouth, and was stammering miserably, “Well, if yon stuff’s a temptation to any poor folk—!” Again he felt that their relationship was on a proper footing; he moved towards her, walking masterfully.  Oh, it was going to be ecstasy....  There was a loud knocking at the outer door.

III

She forgot all about the wine at once, he was so very big.  And he looked as though he had gold rings in his ears, although he hadn’t; it was just part of his sea-going air.

He looked at her very hard and said as though it hardly mattered, “I want to see Mr. James.  My name’s Yaverland.”

“Will you step inside?” said Ellen, with her best English accent.  “Mr. Philip’s expecting you.”  She was glad he had come, for he looked interesting, but she hoped he would not interrupt her warm comfortable occupation of mothering Mr. Philip.  To keep that mood aglow in herself she stopped as they went along the passage and begged, “You’ll not make him miss his train?  He’s away to London to-night.  He should leave here on the very clap of eight.”

The stranger seemed, after a moment’s silence, of which, since they stood in darkness, she could not read the cause, to lay aside a customary indifference for the sake of the gravity of the occasion.  “Oh, certainly; he shall leave on the very clap of eight,” he replied earnestly.