this family a feeling that it was necessary, or at least decent, that
she should always answer them with the cleanest candour. As one rewards
the man who has restored a lost purse by giving him some of the coins in
it, so she shared with them, by the most exact explanation of her
motives whenever they were asked for, the self which they had saved. So
she added, "It's just that I'm bored. Nothing ever happens to me!"

Mr. Philip had hoped she was going to leave it at that "Nothing," and
bore her a grudge for her amplification at the same time that the way
she looked when she made it swept him into sympathy. Indeed, he always
felt about the lavish gratitude with which Ellen laid her personality at
the disposal of the firm rather as the Englishman who finds the Chinaman
whom he saved from death the day before sitting on his verandah in the
expectation of being kept for the rest of his life that his rescuer has
forced upon him. It was true that she was an excellent shorthand-typist,
but she vexed the decent grey by her vividness. The sight of her through
an open door, sitting at her typewriter in her blue linen overall,
dispersed one's thoughts; it was as if a wireless found its waves jammed
by another instrument. Often he found himself compelled to abandon his
train of ideas and apprehend her experiences: to feel a little tired
himself if she drooped over her machine, to imagine, as she pinned on
her tam-o'-shanter and ran down the stairs, how the cold air would
presently prick her smooth skin. Yet these apprehensions were quite
uncoloured by any emotional tone. It was simply that she was essentially
conspicuous, that one had to watch her as one watches a very tall man
going through a crowd. Even now, instead of registering disapproval at
her moodiness, he was looking at her red hair and thinking how it
radiated flame through the twilight of her dark corner, although in the
sunlight it always held the softness of the dusk. That was
characteristic of her tendency always to differ from the occasion. He