"Don't be sorry. Perhaps that's the only way it could remain beautiful. It wouldn't have done, you know. You only thought it could because you were so kind. It was all very well for me to work for you for three weeks or so. It would have been very different when you had me on your hands for a whole year at a stretch. And it's much better for me that it never came off than if I'd had to see you sorry for it afterwards." "If I had been sorry, I should not have let you see it." "I should have seen it, though, whether you let me or not. I always see these things." "But I think, you know, that I wouldn't have been sorry." "You would! You would! You couldn't have stood me." "I think I could." "What, a person with a villainous cockney accent? Who was capable of murdering the Queen's English any day in your drawing-room?" "Oh, no; whatever you do you'll never do that." "Well, I don't know. I'm not really to be trusted unless I've got a pen in my hand. I'm better than I used to be. I've struggled against it. Still, a man who has once murdered the Queen's English always feels, you know, as if he'd got the body under the sofa. It's like homicidal mania; the poor wretch may be cured, but he lives in terror of an attack returning. He knows it doesn't matter what he is or what he does; he may live like a saint or write like an archangel; but one aitch omitted from his conversation will wreck him at the last." "You needn't be afraid; you never omit them." "You mean I never omit them now. But I did five years ago. I couldn't help it. Everybody about me did it. The only difference between them and me was that I knew it, and they didn't." "You _were_ conscious of it, then?" "Conscious? Do you know, that for every lapse of the sort in your presence I suffered the torments of the damned? Do you suppose I didn't know how terrible I was?" She shook her head, this time with disapproval. "You shouldn't say these things." "Do you mean, I shouldn't say them, or shouldn't say them to you?" "Well, I think you shouldn't say them to me. Don't you see that it sounds as if I had done or said something to make you feel like that." "You? Good Heavens! rather not! But whatever you said or did, I couldn't help knowing how you thought of me." "And how was that?" "Well, as half a poet, you know, and half a hair-dresser." "That's funny; but it's another of the things you shouldn't say. Because you know it isn't true." "I only say them because I want you to see how impossible it was." "For me to help you?" "Yes." "I do see it. It _was_ impossible--but not for any of the reasons you suppose. If it had been possible--" "What then?" "Then, perhaps, I needn't have felt so sorry and ashamed. You know I really _am_ a little bit ashamed of having asked a great poet to be my private secretary."