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She looked about. "Oh, I suppose she's seeing to the luggage. You might find her, and tell her where to come to." Senhouse smiled and nodded. "Certainly. All these things shall be done. Anything else before you go off?" She hesitated for a minute, then said, "Yes, there is one more thing. You mustn't come to Brown's like that. You must put on ordinary things."
"Not that sort," Chevenix pronounced, with a shake of the head. "At least, they don't marry the right person. They never do. Or there are two or three persons. Look at Shelley. Look at Dante. I happen to know all about both of 'em. Senhouse drank 'em up and gave 'em out like steam. He thought no end of Dante and Shelley.
"I know," the other replied, "that she has a lovely body, and gracious, free-moving ways; and I could have inferred her soul from them. I'll engage that you did the same thing. How are you to judge of the soul but by the hints which the body affords you?" Senhouse made no answer, but remained musing. When he spoke it was as if he was resuming a tale half-told....
Senhouse, who may have been listening, bowed his head to his knees, below his clasped hands. "Twice she looked full at me without knowing me. Why should she know me now? Her pale and serious face, master, was as beautiful as the winter moon, as remote from us and our little affairs. No words of mine can express to you the outward splendour of her neck and bosom.
"Never name me to her, young Glyde, for I'll tell you now that for every stripe I've dusted your jacket with you owe me forty and you can lay on when you please." "For I," he continued, after a pause for breath, while Glyde stared fearfully upon him, "for I, too, have betrayed her." They said no more at that time, but all day Glyde followed Senhouse about like a dog.
She was quite glad I was going to see him. But she never goes herself, I believe. She's married. Other views altogether, she has. Or he has her husband, you know. It was a rum business altogether, her taking up with old Senhouse. I could have told her what would come of that, if she'd asked me. No malice, you know now. They're good friends. Write to each other. As a fact, she's married.
The stranger was huddled by the fire, probing his wounded feet. "I'm cut to pieces," he said. "I've been over stubbles and flint. This is a cruel country." "It's the sweetest in the world," Senhouse told him, "when you know your way about it. When you have the hang of it you need not touch the roads. You smell out the hedgerows, and every borstal leads you out on to the grass.
"I tell you that you sinned against love. You don't know what love is." "You say so. Maybe you know nothing about it. If you have reduced yourself to be contented with the soul of a woman, I have not. What have I to do with the soul?" "Evidently nothing," said Senhouse. "How, pray, do you undertake to apprehend body's beauty unless you discern the soul in it on which it shapes its beauty?"
More as if it were to satisfy herself than to credit him, she said, to the window and street beyond it, "I wonder that he didn't remember that you would never drag any one into notoriety whom you had once loved." Ingram grinned. "As your man Glyde tried to drag you, my dear! Well, that's one way of accounting for old Senhouse, certainly.
So Senhouse, in his hopeless plight, starved and did well; dreams nourished him in what passes in England for solitude. From the grey of the mornings to the violet-lidded dusk his silence was rarely broken; and yet the music in his heart was continuous; his routine marched to a rhythm.
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