In all other respects we agreed.

There is a never-failing fascination in a man with a secret. It gave
me a pleasant feeling of being behind the scenes, to watch Malim,
sitting in his armchair, the essence of everything that was
conventional and respectable, with Eton and Oxford written all over
him, and to think that he was married all the while to an employee in a
Tottenham Court Road fried-fish shop.

Kit never appeared in the flat: but Malim went nearly every evening to
the little villa. Sometimes he took Julian and myself, more often
myself alone, Julian being ever disinclined to move far from his
hammock. The more I saw of Kit the more thoroughly I realized how
eminently fitted she was to be Malim's wife. It was a union of
opposites. Except for the type of fiction provided by "penny libraries
of powerful stories." Kit had probably not read more than half a dozen
books in her life. Grimm's fairy stories she recollected dimly, and she
betrayed a surprising acquaintance with at least three of Ouida's
novels. I fancy that Malim appeared to her as a sort of combination of
fairy prince and Ouida guardsman. He exhibited the Oxford manner at
times rather noticeably. Kit loved it.

Till I saw them together I had thought Kit's accent and her incessant
mangling of the King's English would have jarred upon Malim. But I soon
found that I was wrong. He did not appear to notice.

I learned from Kit, in the course of my first visit to the villa, some
further particulars respecting her brother Tom, the potato-thrower of
Covent Garden Market. Mr. Thomas Blake, it seemed, was the proprietor
and skipper of a barge. A pleasant enough fellow when sober, but too