Behind London and the book was Millie. She coloured all his day, all his thoughts: sometimes she came before him with her eyes wide and excited like a child waking on her birthday morning. Sometimes she stood in front of him, but away from him, her eyes watching him with that half-ironical suggestion that she knew all about life, that he and indeed all men were children to her whom she could not but pity, that suggestion that went so sweetly with the child in herself, the simplicity and innocence and confidence.
And then again she would be before him simply in her beauty, her colour, gold and red and dark, her body so straight, so strong, so slim, the loveliness of her neck, her hands, her breast. Then a mist came before his eyes and he could see no more.
Sometimes he ached to know how she was, whether she were happy with this man to whom she was engaged; he had no thought any more of having her for himself. That was one thing that his middle-age and his past trouble had brought him—patience, infinite, infinite patience.
Then, as unheralded as such things usually are, the crisis came. It was a foggy afternoon. He came in about half-past three, meaning to work. Just as he was about to sit down at his table his telephone bell rang. He was surprised to hear Martha Proctor's voice: he was still more surprised when she told him that she was at Selfridge's and would like to come in and have tea if he were alone.
Martha Proctor! The last of the Three Graces to pay him any attention he said. But I like her. I've always liked her best of the three. . . .
He got his tea things from the little brown cupboard, made some toast, found a pot of raspberry jam; just as he had finished Martha Proctor stalked in. He liked her clear-cut ways, the decent friendly challenge of her smile, her liking for brown bread and jam, with no nonsense about "not being really hungry." Yes, he liked her—and he was pleased that she had troubled to come to him, even though it was only the fog that had driven her in. But at first his own shyness, the eternal sense always with him that he was a recognized failure, and that no one wanted to hear what he had to say, held him back. There fell silences, silences that always came when he was alone with anybody.
He had not the gift of making others enthusiastic, of firing their intelligence. Only Millie and Henry, and perhaps James Maradick and Bobby Galleon were able to see him as he really was. With others he always thought of the thing that he was going to say before he said it; then, finding it priggish, or sententious, or platitudinous, didn't say it after all. No wonder men found him dull!
He liked Martha Proctor, but the first half-hour of their meeting was not a success. Then, with a smile he broke out:
"You know—you wouldn't think it—but I'm tremendously glad the fog drove you in here to-day. There are so many things I want to talk about, but I've lost my confidence somehow in any one being interested in what I think."
"If you imagine it was the fog," said Martha Proctor, "that brought me in to-day, you are greatly mistaken. I've been meaning to come for weeks. You say you're diffident, well, I'm diffident too, although I wouldn't have any one in the world to know it. Here I am at forty-two, and I'm a failure. No, don't protest. It's true. I know I've got a name and something of a position and young authors are said to wait nervously for my Olympian utterances, but as a matter of fact I've got about as much influence and power as that jam-pot there. But it isn't only with myself I'm disappointed—I'm disappointed with everybody."