back, and he could think of no way of asking her to go on that would not
be, as he put it, _infra dig_. And sure enough, when he entered the room
a shy silence fell on her, which she broke by saying, "If you've not got
the corkscrew there's one on my pocket-knife." He used it, telling
himself that it spared turning on the gas again in the other room, and
she stood behind him murmuring, "Yon's not a bad knife. Four blades and
a thing that takes stones out of a horse's hoof...."

He sat down to his meal, and she remained by the fireplace until he
said, "Pray sit down, Miss Melville, I wish I could ask you to join
me...."

She obeyed because she was afraid she might be fretting him by standing
there, and took the seat on the other side of the table. The gas-jet was
behind her, so to him there was a gold halo about her head and her face
was a dusky oval in which her eyes and the three-cornered patch of her
mouth were points of ardour. She had an animal's faculty for keeping
quite still. He felt a pricking appetite to force the moment on to
something he could not quite previsage, and found himself saying, "Will
you have some Burgundy?"

She was shocked. "Oh no!"

He perceived that here was a matter of principle. But he felt, although
principles were among his conventions, not the least impulse to defer to
it. Instead, the project of persuading her to do something he felt she
oughtn't to do flooded him with a tingling pleasure.

He said, "But it's so pretty!" He could not imagine why he should have
said that, and yet he knew when he had said it that he had hit on an