A voice called from old Heythorp’s den: 

“Phyllis!” It had a particular ring, that voice, as if coming from beautifully formed red lips, of which the lower one must curve the least bit over; it had, too, a caressing vitality, and a kind of warm falsity.

The girl threw a laughing look back over her shoulder, and vanished through the door into the room.

Bob Pillin remained with his back to the fire and his puppy round eyes fixed on the air that her figure had last occupied.  He was experiencing a sensation never felt before.  Those travels with a lady of Spain, charitably conceded him by old Heythorp, had so far satisfied the emotional side of this young man; they had stopped short at Brighton and Scarborough, and been preserved from even the slightest intrusion of love.  A calculated and hygienic career had caused no anxiety either to himself or his father; and this sudden swoop of something more than admiration gave him an uncomfortable choky feeling just above his high round collar, and in the temples a sort of buzzing—­those first symptoms of chivalry.  A man of the world does not, however, succumb without a struggle; and if his hat had not been out of reach, who knows whether he would not have left the house hurriedly, saying to himself:  “No, no, my boy; Millicent Villas is hardly your form, when your intentions are honourable”?  For somehow that round and laughing face, bob of glistening hair, those wide-opened grey eyes refused to awaken the beginnings of other intentions—­such is the effect of youth and innocence on even the steadiest young men.  With a kind of moral stammer, he was thinking:  ’Can I—­dare I offer to see them to their tram?  Couldn’t I even nip out and get the car round and send them home in it?  No, I might miss them—­better stick it out here!  What a jolly laugh!  What a tipping face—­strawberries and cream, hay, and all that!  Millicent Villas!’ And he wrote it on his cuff.

The door was opening; he heard that warm vibrating voice:  “Come along, Phyllis!”—­the girl’s laugh so high and fresh:  “Right-o!  Coming!” And with, perhaps, the first real tremor he had ever known, he crossed to the front door.  All the more chivalrous to escort them to the tram without a hat!  And suddenly he heard:  “I’ve got your hat, young man!” And her mother’s voice, warm, and simulating shock:  “Phyllis, you awful gairl!  Did you ever see such an awful gairl; Mr.—–­”

“Pillin, Mother.”

And then—­he did not quite know how—­insulated from the January air by laughter and the scent of fur and violets, he was between them walking to their tram.  It was like an experience out of the “Arabian Nights,” or something of that sort, an intoxication which made one say one was going their way, though one would have to come all the way back in the same beastly tram.  Nothing so warming had ever happened to him as sitting between them on that drive, so that he forgot the note in his pocket, and his desire to relieve the anxiety of the “old man,” his father.  At the tram’s terminus they all got out.  There issued a purr of invitation to come and see them some time; a clear:  “Jock’ll love to see you!” A low laugh:  “You awful gairl!” And a flash of cunning zigzagged across his brain.  Taking off his hat, he said: