She was ten minutes late, and was glad to think he had noticed it and had been kept waiting. And besides that, she was amazed at his cordiality, at the sudden phase of courtliness which prompted him to take her arm as they strolled down the hotel lobby. She felt that her arm touching his was trembling, and she summoned every effort, mental and physical, to curb this manifestation of her excitement. They entered the lounge and occupied adjacent positions on a chesterfield. The room was comfortably full of fashionably dressed men and women. Catherine felt that many eyes of recognition were upon her. But that caused her no thrill of pleasurable triumph. Her mind and soul were centred on this unique phenomenon that was unfolding itself to her by degrees--Verreker, the curt, the abrupt, the brutally direct, transformed into a veritable grandee of courtliness. In the dining-hall they had a table to themselves that overlooked the dark spaciousness of Parker’s Piece. Once again she was quaintly fascinated by the peculiarities of his table manners. In this respect, at any rate, he was still himself, and she marvelled at the intense personality that crowded into every movement, however bizarre and unconventional, of his knife and fork. Evening dress gave his weird facial expressions a touch of sublimity. She looked round at the other tables and compared him with men there. There was scarcely one that was not more handsome than he, certainly none whose table manners were not infinitely smoother and more refined. There were men whose cheeks and chin were smooth as a shave ten minutes ago could make them. A glance at Verreker showed that a razor had not touched him for at least twenty-four hours. Other men had hair carefully brushed and pomaded, artistically parted in the middle or at the side, compelled into spray-like festoons above the ears. But Verreker’s hair was black and thick, coarse, horsey hair, innocent of pomade and parting, hair that he occasionally ran his fingers through without in any real sense disturbing. Other men in the room were smiling with rows of white symmetrical teeth, speaking in cultured university accents, gazing with animated eyes at their fellow-diners. And yet she knew that compared with him they were all as nothing. The whole secret of him flashed out upon her. He was a man. His personality invaded everything he did and everything that belonged to him: it overflowed like a bursting torrent into his most trivial actions. With all his facial ugliness, his abrupt manners, his disposition, which people called “difficult,” he was the towering superior of any man she knew. And not all the oiled and manicured youths in the world could give her what he could give. She looked triumphantly round the room as if to say: This man here, whom you all think is so ugly and ill-mannered, is, if only you knew it, the personal superior of every one of you! ... She was proud to be with