names. It completed the picture. She now seemed to be listening and
waiting, her attention on the unseen area door. He felt shy and yet
very happy alone with her. Voices were distinctly heard. Who was Mrs.
Lobley? Was Mr. Haim a little annoyed with his daughter, and was
Marguerite exquisitely defiant? Time hung. The situation was slightly
awkward, he thought. And it was obscure, alluring.... He stood there,
below the level of the street, shut in with those beings unknown,
provocative, and full of half-divined implications. And all Chelsea was
around him and all London around Chelsea.

"Father won't be a moment," said the girl. "It's only the charwoman."

"Oh! That's quite all right," he answered effusively, and turning to the
design: "The outlining of that lettering fairly beats me, you know."

"Not really!... I get that from father, of course."

Mr. Haim was famous in the office as a letterer.

She sat idly glancing at her own design, her plump, small hands lying in
the blue lap. George compared her, unspeakably to her advantage, with
the kind, coarse young woman at the chop-house, whom he had asked to
telephone to the Orgreaves for him, and for whom he had been conscious
of a faint penchant.

"I can't colour it by gaslight," said Marguerite Haim. "I shall have to
do that in the morning."

He imagined her at work again early in the morning. Within a week or so
he might be living in this house with this girl. He would be,--watching