"Yes. In Bond Street. I remember you were wearing an exceedingly pretty hat, with some yellow flowers in it."
She was dumbfounded, for she did possess a pretty hat with yellow flowers in it. She had done him an injustice. Fancy him noticing her, admiring, remembering! It was incredible. She must have made a considerable impression on him. She smiled her repentance for having doubted his probity even for a moment.
"You must have a very good memory," she said, in her gaze an exquisite admission of his rightness.
"Oh! I have!"
They shook hands. In holding out her hand she drew back her body. She had absurdly hoped that he would offer to shake hands, not really expecting him to do so. He departed with unimpeachable correctness and composure. What nice discretion he had shown in not referring earlier to the fact that her face was not unknown to him! Most men would have contrived to work it in at the very beginning of the conversation. But he had actually gone away, the first time, without mentioning it.
Lilian was left in such a state of exaltation that she could not immediately start to work. She was ecstatically inspired with a resolution, far transcending all previous yearnings of a similar nature, to fulfil herself, to be herself utterly, to bring her gifts to fruition despite all obstacles and all impossibilities. It was not that she desired to please Lord Mackworth (though she passionately desired to please him), nor to achieve luxury and costliness and elegance and a highly refined way of life. These things, however important and delectable, were merely the necessary incidentals to the supreme end of exploiting her beauty, charm and benevolence so that in old age she would not have to say, "I might have been."
V
The Devotee
It was after she had made some tea and was taking it, at her desk, without milk, but with a bun and a half left over from the previous afternoon's orgy of the small room clerks, that Lilian had the idea of a mighty and scarcely conceivable transgression, crime, depredation. None of the machines in the small room was in quite first-rate order. The machines were good, but they needed adjustment. Miss G.--the clerks referred to her as Miss G., instead of Miss Grig, when they were critical of her, which was often--was almost certainly a just woman, but she was mean, especially in the matter of wages; and she would always postpone rather too long the summoning of a mechanic to overhaul the typewriters. Such delay was, of course, disadvantageous to the office, but Miss G. was like that. Lilian, munching, inserted two sheets and a new carbon into her machine, and then pulled them out again with a swift swish. Why should she not abstract Miss G.'s own machine for the high purpose of typing Lord Mackworth's brilliant article? It was nearly a new one.
Miss G. was a first-rate typist. She typed all her own letters, and regularly at night even did copying; and she always had the star machine of the office. The one objection to Lilian's nefarious scheme was the fact that Miss G.'s machine ranked as the Ark of the Covenant, and the rule forbidding the profane to lay hands on it was absolute and awful. This rule was a necessity in the office, where every machine amounted to an individuality, and was loved or hated and shamelessly intrigued for or against. Lilian knew a little of Miss G.'s machine, for on Its purchase she had had the honour of trying it and reinforcing Miss G.'s favourable judgment upon it, her touch being lighter than Gertie Jackson's, that amiable, tedious hack, and similar to Miss G.'s touch.