“I generally tell you most things,” he said, “if you wait long enough, and you know by this time what an abject ass I am, so you may as well hear the climax. “I was down sketching in Surrey last month. I went after the fever—I didn’t feel as if I could stand the stairs just then—and I found a girl in a cottage there who was willing to sit for me whenever I wanted her. She was—divine! Look!” he got up slowly and took a little canvas from behind the door. “Look! Did Greuse ever have such a head to paint from? I fell in love with her. Of course, it was that colour that did it; that, and her poses, and all her little ways and movements, and her soft little voice—oh—oh—you know the sort of fool I am! I lodged at her mother’s house, and the pair nursed me as if I were a sick cat—well—Look!—I had to leave that place at a moment’s notice or I don’t know what might have happened—you know. I paid up and cleared. “Would you believe it, I hadn’t been home a week, when who should appear one night past ten o’clock but that girl? Upon my word, I broke out in a cold sweat all over. I’m as weak as water, and—she was divine. I tell you—I had an awful job altogether. I quieted her down first, then I had to bathe her feet, such pretty pink little ones, but all torn and bruised. If you believe me, she had walked from ten miles this side of Godalming. I got her some food and gave her up my bed, and somehow or other I got her back next day; she’d have stayed on any terms, poor little soul! Girls are queer fish,” he said modestly, “one never can tell what’ll fetch them. It was all pretty hot on the mother, however, so I gave her the few shillings I had, and then she wrote to say that the girl got fever from the walk, so of course I’ve had to help them, and I regret to say my boots have gone for a change to mine uncle’s. I shall be paid on Friday, and then I’ll bloom back into my pristine glory and accept invitations. “I wonder,” he went on reflectively, “if there’s any way of keeping a fellow from making a fool of himself. If you have happened to hear of any in your travels, an anti-love philtre now, for Heaven’s sake divulge it, it ruins one’s work getting in love in a promiscuous way, it’s a brutal nuisance too, and devilish expensive. I know I always have to pay compound interest for my pleasures in this line, and they’re absolutely mawkish too, in their innocence,” he added, with a little injured sigh. Strange watched the boy curiously, wondering what possible motive, or train of motives, combined to keep his life so clean, with its every condition on the side of uncleanness. “He has neither convictions nor religion to hold him, he is as passionate and sensual a fellow as any going, he is steeped to the lips in Zola and others of that ilk; theoretically, innocence and he are as far apart as the poles. He is a fool, no doubt, but I wish to God the folly would last.”