At the horrible hour of her first coming to Cocker's he was always--it
was to be hoped--snug in bed; and at the hour of her final departure he
was of course--she had such things all on her fingers'-ends--dressing for
dinner. We may let it pass that if she couldn't bring herself to hover
till he was dressed, this was simply because such a process for such a
person could only be terribly prolonged. When she went in the middle of
the day to her own dinner she had too little time to do anything but go
straight, though it must be added that for a real certainty she would
joyously have omitted the repast. She had made up her mind as to there
being on the whole no decent pretext to justify her flitting casually
past at three o'clock in the morning. That was the hour at which, if the
ha'penny novels were not all wrong, he probably came home for the night.
She was therefore reduced to the vainest figuration of the miraculous
meeting toward which a hundred impossibilities would have to conspire.
But if nothing was more impossible than the fact, nothing was more
intense than the vision. What may not, we can only moralise, take place
in the quickened muffled perception of a young person with an ardent
soul? All our humble friend's native distinction, her refinement of
personal grain, of heredity, of pride, took refuge in this small
throbbing spot; for when she was most conscious of the objection of her
vanity and the pitifulness of her little flutters and manoeuvres, then
the consolation and the redemption were most sure to glow before her in
some just discernible sign. He did like her!




CHAPTER XIII