She ought to have informed him on the spot that the thing was quite
impossible, and not to be thought of for one moment. She should have
said, coldly, but firmly--every right-minded and well-behaved girl
would have said--"Sir, it is not right that you should come alone to a
young lady's study. Such things are not to be permitted. It we meet in
society, we may, perhaps, renew our acquaintance."

But girls do go on sometimes as if there was no such thing as
propriety at all, and such cases are said to be growing more frequent.
Besides, Iris was not a girl who was conversant with social
convenances. She looked at her pupil thoughtfully and frankly.

"Can we?" she asked. She who hesitates is lost, a maxim which cannot
be too often read, said, and studied. It is one of the very few golden
rules omitted from Solomon's Proverbs. "Can we? It would be pleasant."

"It you will permit me," he blushed and stammered, wondering at her
ready acquiescence, "if you will permit me to call upon you
sometimes--here, if you will allow me, or anywhere else. You know my
name. I am by profession an artist, and I have a studio close at hand
in Tite Street."

"To call upon me here?" she repeated.

Now, when one is a tutor, and has been reading with a pupil for two
years, one regards that pupil with a feeling which may not be exactly
parental, but which is unconventional. If Arnold had said, "Behold me!
May I, being a young man, call upon you, a young woman?" she would
have replied: "No, young man, that can never be." But when he said,
"May I, your pupil, call sometimes upon you, my tutor?" a distinction