"Ah! I hadn't noticed the smell. I have a delusion, or do I really smell—violets?"
"There are some violets by your elbow. I was wearing them, but they drooped, so I put them into water to revive them."
She turned back again to her work, and the clicking of the machine began anew. He leant to inhale the smell of the violets. Then, with a glance at her bent head, he drew one from the bunch, and, taking a pocket-book out of his coat-pocket, he opened it, and laid the violet between two of its pages.
While he waited he looked about him. The ugliness of the room did not affect him. The flaring gas, the business-like furniture, the unhomely aspect of the place, did not depress him. On the contrary, in his eyes it was pleasant. He always came to it with a sensation of happiness, which was not lessened because he felt half-guilty about it. To him the room was the room which for certain hours of every day contained Mary Gray. What did it matter if the case was unlovely since it held her?
Presently the clicking of the machine ceased, and she looked up at him with a smile.
"You are very good to wait for me," she said.
"Am I?" he answered, smiling back at her. "There is not very much to do to-day. The House is not sitting, and my constituency has been less exacting than usual."
She put the cover on her machine, locked up her desk, and then retired into a corner, where she changed her shoes, putting her slippers away tidily in a cupboard. She put on her hat, setting it straight before a little glass that hung in one corner. She got into her little blue jacket, with its neat collar and cuffs of astrachan. Then she came to him, drawing on her gloves.
"I am quite ready now," she said.
They lowered the gas, and went down the stone steps side by side. At the foot of the stairs Mary stopped to call into the depths of the back premises that she was going home, and a woman's voice bade her good-night.