Nearly all Panoukian's leisure was spent at Gray's Inn or out with Old Mole and Matilda, or with them on their visits to those of their friends to whom they had introduced him. He was good-looking, well built, easily adept at ball-games--for he possessed a quick, sure eye--and his shy frankness made him likeable. The charm of English country life would soften his violence and soothe his prejudices, but only the more, when he returned to London, would he chafe against the incessant pursuit of material advantages, the mania of unselective acquisition, the spinning and droning of the many-colored humming-top. From the first moment he had been Matilda's slave, and no trouble was too great, no time too long, no task too tedious, if only he could yield her some small service. He would praise her to Old Mole: "She is so real. Compare her with other women. She does all the things they do, and does them better. She takes them in her stride. She can laugh with you, talk with you, understand what you mean better than you do yourself, give you just the little encouragement you need, and you can talk to her and forget that she is a woman. . . . You don't know, sir, what an extraordinary difference it has made in my life since I have known you two." That would embarrass Old Mole, and he found it impossible to say anything without jarring Panoukian's feelings. Therefore he would say nothing, and later he would look at Matilda, watch her, wait for her smile, and wonder. Her smile was the most surprising, the most intimate gift he ever had from her. Often for days together they would hardly see each other and, when they met, would have little to say, but he would watch until he could meet her gaze, win a smile from her, and feel her friendliness, her interest, and know that they still had much to share and were still profoundly aware of each other. He would say to her sometimes: "I don't see much of you nowadays." She would answer: "But you are so interested in so many things. And I like my life." And in the gentle gravity with which she now spoke to him, which was in every gesture of her attitude toward him, he would discern a fuller grace than any he had hoped to find in her. She was so trim and neat, so well disciplined, so delicate and nice in all she did; restrained and subtle but with no loss of force. Even her follies, the absurd modish tricks she had caught in the theater and among the women who fawned on her, seemed no impediment to her impulse should the moment come for yielding to it. She was no more spendthrift of emotion and affection than she was of money, and, almost, he thought, too thorough in her self-effacement and endeavor to be no kind of burden upon him. "I am so proud of you!" he would say. And she would smile and answer: "You don't know, you never will know, how grateful I am to you."