He then began to buy books on the chance of her liking them, which answered better.
He promoted himself by degrees to personalities. He talked to her about herself, handling her with religious reticence as a thing of holy and incomprehensible mystery.
"I suppose," he said one day, "if I were good enough, I should understand you. Why do you sigh like that? Is it because I'm not good enough? Or because I don't understand?"
"I think," said she, "it is because I don't understand you."
"My dear" (he allowed himself at this point the more formal endearment), "I thought I was disgracefully transparent—I'm limpidity, simplicity itself. I've only one idea and one subject of conversation. Ask Edith. She understands me."
"Ah, Edith—" said Anne, as if Edith were a very different affair.
The intonation was hopeful, it suggested some slender and refined jealousy. (If only he could make her jealous!)
On the strength of it he advanced to the punctual daily offering of flowers, flowers for her drawing-room, flowers for her bedroom, flowers for her to wear. After that he took to writing her letters from the office with increasing frequency and fervour. Anne, too, was courteous and distant. She accepted all he had to offer as a becoming tribute to her feminine superiority, and evaded dexterously the deeper issue.
Now and then he reported his progress to Edith.
"I rather think," he said, "she's coming round. I'm regarded as a distinctly eligible person."