Shutting the door of his room, he went across to the chair by the fire. What did it mean? What did it mean? Here and there he had fallen in love; but this was not the same sort of thing. This was not falling in love. Falling in love was quick, sudden, a flash that burnt up all desire to work, flared out in a moment, obliterating everything else. But this was slow, stealthy, a growing thing that asked, not for sudden satisfaction, but for wonderful, untellable things. All the attributes common to love, as he had understood it, had no place in this sensation. As he had thought of it, love found its expression in the gratification of the need with which it had begun, or it ended, like his stories--unhappily. Then this could not be love. There was no ending of gratification and no ending of unhappiness to this. It was unending. Was that what his mother had meant he would learn? Then, as he sat before the fire, wondering what new thing he had found, the bell rang again. It found no echo on this occasion. He slowly turned his head. They were not going to deceive him a second time. He rose quietly from his chair, crossed to the window, silently raised it and, as silently, looked out. There, below him, he saw a woman’s hat--a hat with fur in it, cunningly twined through grey velvet,--a hat that he knew, a hat that he had often seen before. He closed the window quietly and slowly made his way downstairs. Before he reached the end of the passage, the bell rang again. Then he opened the door. It was the lady on whose behalf the fur coat had discharged the debt of honour. She stepped right in with a little laugh of pleasure at finding him there; turned and waited while he closed the door behind them, then linked her arm in his as they mounted the stairs. "I came," said she, "on chance. Aren’t you glad to see me?" There was just that fraction’s pause before he replied--that pause into which a woman’s mind leaps for answer. And how accurately she makes that leap, how surely she reaches the mental ground upon which you take your place, you will never be able truly to anticipate. "Yes," said John, "I’m very glad." "Then what is it?" she said quickly. "Are you writing?" "No, I’m not. I’ve tried to, but I can’t." "Then are you expecting someone?" He looked up at her, smiled, opened the door of his room, and bid her pass through. "And is all this," said he, "because I paused a moment when you asked me if I was glad to see you?"