"Of course he doesn't. That's part of the trouble. He's got his eyes fixed on this distant goal and he doesn't see the other things nearer his eyes. He doesn't see that if a man's going to be a success in this world he's got to make friends and go about and not be satisfied with two hundred pounds a year." (The money seemed to obsess her.)

"He'd tell you he didn't want to be that sort of success."

"But he must be, if he's going to be any other sort of success in addition. Even the medieval saints, who made a virtue of poverty, used to make an advertisement of it as well. He doesn't do even that. Of course I don't say he need be an absolutely worldly success like Geoffrey. He couldn't be if he tried, I'm sure. But I think he might compromise."

She added after a pause: "It would do him good to fall in love."

I laughed then. "He's not likely to do that. He's scared of women altogether, and—excepting you—I've never known him to be at ease in a woman's presence. When some of his girl students come to ask him about their work, he stammers and looks uncomfortable till they're gone."

We talked on for a short time longer, and then she said she must go. She put the cat into a chair and gave a final stroke to its sleek head. "A saucer of milk after I've gone," she said, "is the best I can do for him, isn't it? Will you give it him?" I promised I would, and then, as I helped her on with her coat, she added: "I'm going to try to convert him. Terrington, I mean, not the cat.... And I shall begin by calling him Terry. Do you think he'll mind?"

I said laughingly that I didn't suppose he would encourage the liberty. We walked out to Gower Street together, and I got her a taxi. "I daresay it'll be a hard job," she said finally, as she shook hands, "but I mean to do it."

VII

I was relieved when she had gone. The whole atmosphere had been curiously tense, and from the moment that the laboratory-boy had made his unwelcome intrusion, I had been thoroughly uncomfortable. After seeing her off I walked a short distance to buy an evening paper, and it was nearly seven when I climbed up again to the top storey of the Physics Building. The cat was asleep in front of the fire, and when, remembering my promise, I placed a saucer of milk on the floor beside it, one green eye slowly opened and then disdainfully closed again.

At seven he returned, after delivering his lecture on (I think) the Mycology and Bacteriology of Foods. The first thing he noticed was the cat and the saucer of milk. Explanations were necessary, and he accepted them as a wise adult might listen to the charming vagaries of a child. "How like her!" he said, but no more. And within half-an-hour the cat was back in its cage.