"Miss Harden," he began, "you've been so awfully good to me, there's something that I want most awfully to say to you." "Well, say it." But there was that in her tone which warned him not to be too long about it. "It's something I ought to have said--to have confessed--ages ago--" "Oh no, really Mr. Rickman, if it's a confession, you mustn't do it now. We shall never finish at this rate." "When may I?" "Some time in the afternoon, perhaps." Her smile, which was exceedingly subtle, disconcerted him inexpressibly. She turned at once to the business of the day. The question was whether he would begin on a new section, or finish this one with her, writing at her dictation? He too was calm, business-like, detached. He strangled a happy smile which suggested that her question was absurd. To start a new section was to work gloomily by himself, at some distant quarter of the room; to write to her dictation was to be near her, soothed by her voice and made forgetful by her eyes. Hypocritically he feigned a minute's reflection, as if it were a matter for hesitation and for choice. "Wouldn't you find it less tiring if I read and you wrote?" "No, I had better read. You can write faster than I can." So he wrote his fastest, while Lucia Harden read out titles to him in the sonorous Latin tongue. She was standing ankle-deep in Gnostics and Neo-Platonists; as for Mr. Rickman, he was, as he observed, out of his depth there altogether. "Iamblichus, _De Mysteriis Egyptiorum_. Do you know him?" Mr. Rickman smiled as he admitted that his acquaintance with Iamblichus was of the slightest; Lucia laughed as she confessed an ignorance extending to the very name. He noticed that she always seemed pleased when she had any ignorance to own up to; had she found out that this gave pleasure to other people? "Is he Philosophy, or is he Religion?" She invariably deferred to Rickman on a question of classification. She handed the book to him. "Can you tell?" "I really don't know; he seems to be both. I'd better have a look at him." He turned over the pages, glancing at the text. "I say, listen to this." He hit on a passage at random, and read out the Greek, translating fluently. "'If then the presence of the divine fire and the unspeakable form of the divine light descend upon a man, wholly filling and dominating him, and encompassing him on every side, so that he can in no way carry on his own affairs, what sense or understanding or perception of ordinary matters should he have who has received the divine fire?' Can he be referring to the business capacity of poets?"