On Battersea terrace.

If a woman were to choose any period of her life which she pleased, for indefinite prolongation, she would certainly select that period which lies between the first perception of the first symptoms—­when she begins to understand that a man has begun to love her—­and the day when he tells her so.

Yet women who look back to this period with so much fondness and regret forget their little tremors and misgivings—­the self-distrust, the hopes and fears, the doubts and perplexities, which troubled this time.  For although it is acknowledged, and has been taught by all philosophers from King Lemuel and Lao-Kiun downward, that no greater prize can be gained by any man than the love of a good woman, which is better than a Peerage—­better than a Bonanza mine—­better than Name and Fame, Kudos and the newspaper paragraph, and is arrived at by much less exertion, being indeed the special gift of the gods to those they love; yet all women perfectly understand the other side to this great truth—­namely, that no greater happiness can fall to any woman than the love of a good man.  So that, in all the multitudinous and delightful courtships which go on around us, and in our midst, there is, on both sides, both with man and with maid, among those who truly reach to the right understanding of what this great thing may mean, a continual distrust of self, with humility and anxiety.  And when, as sometimes happens, a girl has been brought up in entire ignorance of love, so that the thought of it has never entered her head, the thing itself, when it falls upon her, is overwhelming, and infolds her as with a garment from head to foot, and, except to her lover, she becomes as a sealed fountain.  I know not how long this season of expectation would have lasted for Iris, but for Arnold’s conversation with his cousin, which persuaded him to speak and bring matters to a final issue.  To this girl, living as secluded as if she was in an Oriental harem, who had never thought of love as a thing possible for herself, the consciousness that Arnold loved her was bewildering and astonishing, and she waited, knowing that sooner or later something would be said, but trembling for fear that it should be said.

After all, it was Lala Roy, and not Clara, who finally determined Arnold to wait no longer.

He came every day to the studio with Iris when she sat for her portrait.  This was in the afternoon.  But he now got into the habit of coming in the morning, and would sit in silence looking on.  He came partly because he liked the young man, and partly because the painter’s art was new to him, and it amused him to watch a man giving his whole time and intellect to the copying or faces and things on canvas.  Also, he was well aware by this time that it was not to see Mr. Emblem or himself that Arnold spent every evening at the house, and he was amused to watch the progress of an English courtship.  In India, we know, they manage matters differently, and so as to give the bridegroom no more trouble than is necessary.  This young man, however, took, he observed, the most wonderful pains and the most extraordinary trouble to please.