Regarded prosaically, the acquaintance had come about, much as very delightful and profitable acquaintances are made in a class of a considerably lower social grade than that to which either of them belonged. Robert had noticed and admired the dark-eyed, mysterious-looking girl who read at the table opposite to his own, had seized the chance of helping her with some heavy books which she was lifting from the reference shelves, and the further opportunity of leaving the reading-room with her at the moment she had chosen for lunch. With that deliberate ignoring of foolish convention, of which sandals and freely exposed necks are the outward and visible sign, she had expressed her thanks with an impressiveness impossible to the silence of the reading-room, and a quarter of an hour later, Robert found himself lunching with her at a vegetarian restaurant, suffering French beans gladly. He had met her at a critical moment, the moment when the last sparks of passion for his wife had died a natural death, and he had begun to crave for “a new interest in life.” It was, so he expressed to himself, the prompting of a very ordinary instinct. Philippa had accepted the paraphrase with melancholy fervor, and had set about ministering to the requirements it indicated, after the manner of a priestess. She had promptly admitted Robert to her temple,--an austerely furnished studio in Fulham,--had given him tea out of cups with no handles, and made the ceremony seem like a sacrificial rite. She had listened to the reading of his manuscripts, and called them blessed; she had discussed his wife, and called her a nice little thing; she had dealt in abstractions such as honor, ennobling influences, the transmutation of passion into a religious flame to illumine and make life holy; and she had hitherto resisted with grieved patience all Robert’s man-like relapses into a somewhat less rarefied atmosphere. Robert was naturally very much in love. “I thought to-day would never come!” he murmured. “Are you better? You’ve been working far too hard. Ah, you shouldn’t. Another cushion?” Philippa accepted the cushion, but motioned Robert back to his place with gentle persistence. “Not work?” she said. “But I must. How else should I live? Though certainly sometimes I wonder why. It’s then that I hear the river flowing. How quiet it would be, wouldn’t it? What a sweet washing away of life’s troubles and wearinesses--and mistakes!” She fixed her swimming eyes upon a leafy branch opposite, and spoke in an infinitely sad, deep voice. “Don’t, Philippa!” urged Robert, in distress. “I can’t bear it. You know how I want to shield you. You are not strong enough to battle with life. You know how I long to----”