In the evening Matilda came as she had promised, with the book, which proved to be that Life of Napoleon by Walter Scott which so incensed Heine. The sun shone in at the window upon the girl's brown hair, and as she opened the book the church bells began to ring with such an insistent buzzing that it was impossible for her to read. As he lay in bed Old Mole thought of Heine lying in his mattress-grave, being visited by his _Mouche,_ just such another charming creature as this, young and ardent, and by her very presence soothing; only he was no poet, but a man dulled by years of unquestioning service. He gazed at Matilda as he could not recollect ever having gazed at a woman, critically, but with warm interest. There was a kind of bloom on her, the fragrance and graciousness that, when he had encountered it as a young man, had produced in him a delicious blurring of the senses, an almost intoxication wherein dreadfully he had lost sight of the individual in the possession of them, and considered her only as woman. Now his subjection to the spell only heightened his sense of Matilda's individuality and sharpened his curiosity about her. Also it stripped him of his preoccupation with himself and his own future, and he fell to considering hers and wondering what the world might hold for her. . . . Like most men he had his little stock of generalizations about women, how they were mysterious, capricious, cruel, unintelligent, uncivilized, match-making, tactless, untruthful, etc., but to Matilda he could not apply them. He wanted to know exactly how she personally felt, thought, saw, moved, lived, and he refused to make any assumption about her. This curiosity of his was not altogether intellectual: it was largely physical, and it grew. He was annoyed that he had not seen her come into the room to mark how she walked, and to procure this satisfaction he asked her to give him a glass of water. He watched her. She walked easily with, for a woman, a long stride and only a very slight swing of the hips, and a drag of the arms that pleased him mightily. As she gave him the glass of water she said: "You do look nice. I knew you would, without that moustache." She had a strong but pleasant North-Country accent, and in her voice there was a faint huskiness that he found very moving, though it was only later, when he analyzed the little thrills which darted about him in all his conversations with her, that he set it down to her voice. . . . She resumed her seat by the foot of his bed with her book in her hand, and his physical curiosity waxed only the greater from the satisfaction he had given it. He could find no excuse for more, and when the bells ceased he took refuge in talk. "Where were you born, Matilda?" "In a back street," she said. "Father was a fitter, and mother was a dressmaker, but she died, and father got the rheumatism, so as we all 'ad--had--to work. There was----" "Were." She blushed and looked very cross.