mule about it. And now she was saying that she had never meant him to pay
her; she had done the whole thing out of friendship, which, of course,
was very pretty of her, but it put him in a beastly position. He'd never
been precisely in that position before and he didn't know what to do
about it. He didn't want to offend her and yet he didn't see--did I?--how
he could let her do it. It was, he said, all the wrong way about,
according to his notions. And for the life of him he didn't know what to
do. It might seem to me incredible that such virgin innocence as his
should exist in a world where the rules for most sorts of conduct were
fairly settled. He had lived all his life in an atmosphere of births,
marriages and deaths, and he knew all the rules for the registration of
them. And that was about all he did know. And it was the most infernally
hard luck to be stumped like this at the very beginning, just when he
wanted most awfully to do the right thing.

Besides, it had knocked him all to bits--the sheer prettiness of it.

He laid bare for me all the curious intricacies of a soul tortured by its
own delicacy. There was agony in his eyes.

If he were to take this kindness from a lady--would it, in my opinion, or
would it not, be cricket?

I didn't like to tell him that he had brought his agony on himself by his
imprudence in employing a typist when he couldn't afford one. So I only
said that, if I knew the lady, he would find her uncommonly hard to move.

He hadn't any hope, he said, of moving her; but did I think that if he
made her a present--say, the Collected Works of George Meredith, it would
meet the case?