She had quitted her seat some time before, and now, to get him into motion, hovered before him while, still motionless, he looked up at her. Something intimate, in the silence, appeared to pass between them--a community of fatigue and failure and, after all, of intelligence. There was a final cynical humour in it. It determined him, in any case, at last, and he slowly rose, taking in again as he stood there the testimony of the room. He might have been counting the photographs, but he looked at the flowers with detachment. "Who's coming?" "Mrs. Medwin." "American?" "Dear no!" "Then what are you doing for her?" "I work for every one," she promptly returned. "For every one who pays? So I suppose. Yet isn't it only we who do pay?" There was a drollery, not lost on her, in the way his queer presence lent itself to his emphasised plural. "Do you consider that YOU do?" At this, with his deliberation, he came back to his charming idea. "Only try me, and see if I can't be MADE to. Work me in." On her sharply presenting her back he stared a little at the clock. "If I come at seven may I stay to dinner?" It brought her round again. "Impossible. I'm dining out." "With whom?" She had to think. "With Lord Considine." "Oh my eye!" Scott exclaimed. She looked at him gloomily. "Is THAT sort of tone what makes you pay? I think you might understand," she went on, "that if you're to sponge on me successfully you mustn't ruin me. I must have SOME remote resemblance to a lady." "Yes? But why must _I_?" Her exasperated silence was full of answers, of which however his inimitable manner took no account. "You don't understand my real strength; I doubt if you even understand your own. You're clever, Mamie, but you're not so clever as I supposed. However," he pursued, "it's out of Mrs. Medwin that you'll get it." "Get what?" "Why the cheque that will enable you to assist me." On this, for a moment, she met his eyes. "If you'll come back at seven sharp--not a minute before, and not a minute after, I'll give you two five-pound notes." He thought it over. "Whom are you expecting a minute after?" It sent her to the window with a groan almost of anguish, and she answered nothing till she had looked at the street. "If you injure me, you know, Scott, you'll be sorry." "I wouldn't injure you for the world. What I want to do in fact is really to help you, and I promise you that I won't leave you--by which I mean won't leave London--till I've effected something really pleasant for you. I like you, Mamie, because I like pluck; I like you much more than you like me. I like you very, VERY much." He had at last with this reached the door and opened it, but he remained with his hand on the latch. "What does Mrs. Medwin want of you?" he thus brought out. She had come round to see him disappear, and in the relief of this prospect she again just indulged him. "The impossible." He waited another minute. "And you're going to do it?"