She smiled at him and something in her smile made him blush hotly. For a moment he could have believed she understood. And indeed, she did understand, and it amused her to find this boy doing—what she herself had done at times—what indeed she felt it was still in her to do. She felt that most delicate of sympathies, the sympathy of one rather over-imaginative person for another. But her next question dispelled his doubt of her though it left him red and hot. She asked it with a convincing simplicity. “Have you any idea, Dick, have you any guess or suspicion, I mean, who it is you really are?” “I wish I had, miss,” he said. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, really—but one can’t help wondering....” How often he had wondered in his lonely wanderings through that dear city of day-dreams where all the people one knows look out of windows as one passes and the roads are paved with pride! How often had he decided and changed and decided again! § 9 Now suddenly a realization of intrusion shattered this conversation. A third person stood over the little encampment, smiling mysteriously and waving a cleek in a slow hieratic manner through the air. “De licious lill’ corn’,” said the newcomer in tones of benediction. He met their enquiring eyes with a luxurious smile, “Licious,” he said, and remained swaying insecurely and failing to express some imperfectly apprehended deep meaning by short peculiar movements of the cleek. He was obviously a golfer astray from some adjacent course—and he had lunched. “Mighty Join you,” he said, and then very distinctly in a full large voice, “Miss Malleleine Philps.” There are the penalties of a public and popular life. “He’s _drunk_,” the lady whispered. “Get him to go away, Dick. I can’t endure drunken men.” She stood up and Bealby stood up. He advanced in front of her, slowly with his nose in the air, extraordinarily like a small terrier smelling at a strange dog. “I said Mighty Join you,” the golfer repeated. His voice was richly excessive. He was a big heavy man with a short-cropped moustache, a great deal of neck and dewlap and a solemn expression. “Prup. Be’r. Introzuze m’self,” he remarked. He tried to indicate himself by waving his hand towards himself, but finally abandoned the attempt as impossible. “Ma’ Goo’ Soch’l Poshishun,” he said. Bealby had a disconcerting sense of retreating footsteps behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Miss Philips standing at the foot of the steps that led up to the fastnesses of the caravan. “Dick,” she cried with a sharp note of alarm in her voice, “get rid of that man.” A moment after Bealby heard the door shut and a sound of a key in its lock. He concealed his true feelings by putting his arms akimbo, sticking his legs wider apart and contemplating the task before him with his head a little on one side. He was upheld by the thought that the yellow caravan had a window looking upon him....