"And how does he behave to _you_? Is he treating you decently?"
"Oh! Fairly. You see, he's got a lot to get over. And he's most frightfully upset about--his wife. Well, you saw him yourself, didn't you?"
"That's no reason why he should treat you badly."
"But he doesn't, George!"
"Oh! I know! I know! Do you think I don't know? He's not even decent to you. I can hear it in your voice. Why should you go back and live with him if he isn't prepared to appreciate it?"
"But he expects it, George. And what am I to do? He's all alone. I can't leave him all alone, can I?"
George burst out:
"I tell you what it is. Marguerite. You're too good-natured. That's what it is. You're too good-natured. And it's a very bad thing."
Tears came into her eyes; she could not control them. She was grieved by his remark.
"I'm not, George, truly. You must remember father's been through a lot this last week. So have I."
"I know! I know! I admit all that. But you're too good-natured, and I'll stick to it."
She was smiling again.
"You only think that because you're fond of me. Nobody else would say it, and I'm not. Help me to lift this trunk on to the chest."
While the daylight withdrew, and the smell of the lamp strengthened and then faded, and the shadows cast by the lamp-rays grew blacker, she went on rapidly with her packing, he serving her at intervals. They said little. His lower lip fell lower and lower. The evening was immensely, horribly different from what he had expected and hoped for. He felt once more the inescapable grip of destiny fastening upon him.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" he asked, after a long time.
"I told father I should be back at a quarter-past nine."
This statement threw George into a condition of total dark disgust. He made no remark. But what remarks he could have made--sarcastic, bitter, unanswerable! Why indeed in the name of heaven should she promise her father to be back at a quarter-past nine, or at a quarter-past anything?
Was she a servant? Had she no rights? Had he himself, George, no rights?
A little before nine Agg arrived. Marguerite was fastening the trunk.
"Now be sure, Agg," said Marguerite. "Don't forget to hang out the Carter Paterson card at the end of the alley to-morrow morning. I must have these things at home to-morrow night for certain. The labels are on. And here's twopence for the man."
"Do I forget?" retorted Agg cheerfully. "By the way, George, I want to talk to you." She turned to Marguerite and repeated in quite a different voice: "I want to talk to him, dear, to-night. Do, let him stay. Will you?"
Marguerite gave a puzzled assent.
"I'll call after I've taken Marguerite to Alexandra Grove, Agg--on my way back to the club."
"Oh no, you won't!" said Agg. "I shall be gone to bed then. Look at that portrait and see how I've worked. My family's concerned about me. It wants me to go away for a holiday."
George had not till then noticed the portrait at all.
"But I must take Marguerite along to the Grove," he insisted. "She can't go alone."
"And why can't she go alone? What sort of a conventional world do you think you live in? Don't girls go home alone? Don't they come in alone?
Don't I? Anybody would think, to listen to some people, that the purdah flourished in Chelsea. But it's all pretence. I don't ask for the honour of a private interview with you every night. You've both of you got all your lives before you. And for once in a way Marguerite's going out alone. At least, you can take her to the street, I don't mind that. But don't be outside more than a minute."
Agg, who had sat down, rose and slowly removed her small hat. With pins in her mouth she said something about the luggage to Marguerite.
"All right! All right!" George surrendered gloomily. In truth he was not sorry to let Marguerite depart solitary. And Agg's demeanour was very peculiar; he would have been almost afraid to be too obstinate in denying her request. He had never seen her hysterical, but a suspicion took him that she might be capable of hysteria.... You never knew, with that kind of girl, he thought sagaciously.
In the darkness of the alley George said to Marguerite, feigning irritation:
"What on earth does she want?"
"Agg? Oh! It's probably nothing. She does get excited sometimes, you know."
The two girls had parted with strange, hard demonstrations of affection from Agg.
"I suppose you'll write," said George coldly.
"To-morrow, darling," she replied quite simply and gravely.
Her kiss was warm, complete, faithful, very loving, very sympathetic.
Nothing in her demeanour as she left him showed that George had received it in a non-committal manner. Yet she must have noticed his wounded reserve. He did not like such duplicity. He would have preferred her to be less miraculously angelic.
When he re-entered the studio, Agg, who very seldom smoked, was puffing violently at a cigarette. She reclined on one elbow on the settee, her eyes fixed on the portrait of herself. George was really perturbed by the baffling queerness of the scenes through which he was passing.
"Look here, infant-in-arms," she began immediately. "I only wanted to say two words to you about Marguerite. Can you stand it?"
There was a pause. George walked in front of her, hiding the easel.
"Yes," he said gruffly.
"Well, Marguerite's a magnificent girl. She's extraordinarily capable.
You'd think she could look after herself as well as anyone. But she can't. I know her far better than you do. She needs looking after.
She'll make a fool of herself if she isn't handled."
"How do you mean?"
"You know how I mean."
"D'you mean about the old man?"
"I mean about the perfectly horrid old man.... Ah! If I was in your place, if I was a man," she said passionately, "do you know what I should do with Marguerite? I should carry her off. I should run away with her. I should drag her out of the house, and she should know what a real man was. I'm not going to discuss her with you. I'm not going to say any more at all. I'm off to bed. But before you go, I do think you might tell me my portrait's a pretty good thing."
And she did not say any more.
III
The written part of the examination lasted four days; and then there was an interval of one day in which the harassed and harried aspirants might restore themselves for the two days' ordeal of the viva voce. George had continued to be well satisfied with his work up to the interval. He considered that he had perfectly succeeded in separating the lover and the examinee, and that nothing foreign to the examination could vitiate his activity therein. It was on the day of repose, a Wednesday, that a doubt suddenly occurred to him as to the correctness of his answer, in the "Construction" paper, to a question which began with the following formidable words: "A girder, freely supported at each end and forty feet long, carries a load of six tons at a distance of six feet from one end and another load of ten tons----" Thus it went on for ten lines. He had always been impatient of detail, and he hated every kind of calculation.