“So clever”—­“not so good as usual”—­“I thought it most unfair,” said Mr. Benson and Miss Rosseter, discussing the Saturday Westminster.  Did they not compete regularly for prizes?  Had not Mr. Benson three times won a guinea, and Miss Rosseter once ten and sixpence?  Of course Everard Benson had a weak heart, but still, to win prizes, remember parrots, toady Miss Perry, despise Miss Rosseter, give tea-parties in his rooms (which were in the style of Whistler, with pretty books on tables), all this, so Jacob felt without knowing him, made him a contemptible ass.  As for Miss Rosseter, she had nursed cancer, and now painted water-colours.

“Running away so soon?” said Miss Perry vaguely.  “At home every afternoon, if you’ve nothing better to do—­except Thursdays.”

“I’ve never known you desert your old ladies once,” Miss Rosseter was saying, and Mr. Benson was stooping over the parrot’s cage, and Miss Perry was moving towards the bell....

The fire burnt clear between two pillars of greenish marble, and on the mantelpiece there was a green clock guarded by Britannia leaning on her spear.  As for pictures—­a maiden in a large hat offered roses over the garden gate to a gentleman in eighteenth-century costume.  A mastiff lay extended against a battered door.  The lower panes of the windows were of ground glass, and the curtains, accurately looped, were of plush and green too.

Laurette and Jacob sat with their toes in the fender side by side, in two large chairs covered in green plush.  Laurette’s skirts were short, her legs long, thin, and transparently covered.  Her fingers stroked her ankles.

“It’s not exactly that I don’t understand them,” she was saying thoughtfully.  “I must go and try again.”

“What time will you be there?” said Jacob.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“To-morrow?”

No, not to-morrow.

“This weather makes me long for the country,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the back view of tall houses through the window.

“I wish you’d been with me on Saturday,” said Jacob.

“I used to ride,” she said.  She got up gracefully, calmly.  Jacob got up.  She smiled at him.  As she shut the door he put so many shillings on the mantelpiece.

Altogether a most reasonable conversation; a most respectable room; an intelligent girl.  Only Madame herself seeing Jacob out had about her that leer, that lewdness, that quake of the surface (visible in the eyes chiefly), which threatens to spill the whole bag of ordure, with difficulty held together, over the pavement.  In short, something was wrong.

Not so very long ago the workmen had gilt the final “y” in Lord Macaulay’s name, and the names stretched in unbroken file round the dome of the British Museum.  At a considerable depth beneath, many hundreds of the living sat at the spokes of a cart-wheel copying from printed books into manuscript books; now and then rising to consult the catalogue; regaining their places stealthily, while from time to time a silent man replenished their compartments.