“Even in College street you have heard of Miss Howe,” Alicia said, and the negative very readable in Arnold’s silent brow brought Hilda a flicker of happiness at her hostess’s expense.

“I don’t think the posters carry us as far as College street,” she said, “but I am not difficult to explain, Mr. Arnold.  I act with Mr. Stanhope’s Company.  If you lived in Chowringhee you couldn’t help knowing all about me, the letters are so large.”  The bounty of her well-spring of kindness was in it under the candour and the simplicity; it was one of those least of little things which are enough.

Arnold smiled back at her, and she saw recognition leap through the armour-plate of his ecclesiasticism.  He glanced away again quickly, and looked at the floor as he said he feared they were terribly out of it in College street, for which, however, he had evidently no apology to offer.  He continued to look at the floor with a careful air, as if it presented points pertinent to the situation.  Hilda felt herself—­it was an odd sensation—­too sunny upon the nooked, retiring current that flowed in him.  He might have turned to the cool accustomed shadow that Alicia made, but she was aware that he did not, that he was struggling through her strangeness and his shyness for something to say to her.  He stirred his coffee, and once or twice his long upper lip trembled as if he thought he had found it; but it was Alicia who talked, making light accusations against the rigours of the Mission House, complaining of her cousin that he was altogether given over to bonds and bands, that she personally would soon cease to hold him in affection at all; she saw so little of him it wasn’t really worth while.

This was old fencing ground between them, and Stephen parried her pleasantly enough, but his eyes strayed speculatively to the other end of the table, where, however, they rose no higher than the firm, lightly-moulded hand that held the cigarette.

“If I could found a monastic order,” Hilda said, “one of the rules should be a week’s compulsory retirement into the world four times a year.”  She spoke with a kind of grave brightness:  it was difficult to know whether she was altogether in jest.

“There would be a secession all over the place,” Arnold responded, with his repressed smile.  “You would get any number of probationers; I wonder whether you would keep them!”

“During that week,” Hilda went on, “they should be compelled to dine and dance every night, to read a ‘Problem’ novel every morning before luncheon, to marry and be given in marriage, and to go to all the variety entertainments.  Think of the austere bliss of the return to the cloisters!  All joy lies in a succession of sensations, they say.  Do you remember how Lord Ormont arranged his pleasures?  Oh, yes, my brotherhood would be popular, as soon as it was understood.”

Alicia hurried in with something palliating—­she could remember flippancies of her own that had been rebuked—­but there was no sigh or token of disapproval in Arnold’s face.  What she might have observed there, if she had been keen enough in vision, was a slight disarrangement, so to speak, of the placid priestly mask, and something like the original undergraduate looking out from beneath.