To this estrangement between himself and Margaret John ascribed a false cause. He regarded it as a consequence of his own insignificant position as a midshipman without money. He was not cynical and foolish enough to imagine that Margaret deliberately excluded him from her consideration because he was poor. Rather, it seemed, the practical hopelessness of any love for him prevented its growth as naturally as darkness stifles a flower. How should she learn to love him when every circumstance of her own life and of his association with her was evidence that such love must be vain? The sight of Mr. Fane-Herbert was enough to shatter any dreams. Never was a man a more loyal citizen of the “world as it is.” To look at his gold watch-chain was to remember your poverty; to hear him speak of success, of the men who “got there,” of the “youths who were likely to do something in the world,” was to become vividly aware that you had neither succeeded, nor got there, nor were likely to do anything in the world. When Mr. Fane-Herbert’s business gave him a short respite, which he spent at Wei-hai-wei, Margaret seemed more than ever unapproachable and Ordith’s position more than ever assured. Confronted for the first time by the problem of a woman’s mind, and having no woman to whom he could go for counsel, John was guilty of an error in judgment almost as often as he and Margaret met. To him, in his present mood, every sign seemed a sign of ill-omen. If she went out of the room when he was there he thought she wished to avoid him. If she was not at home when he called he imagined that she had foreseen his coming. To his ears she seemed never to speak of Ordith save with approval. In the meantime, Ordith made regular, methodical, and carefully recorded progress. Margaret could not understand John. At a time when she had been most eager to help him he had become suddenly uncommunicative, and lately, without any kind of explanation, he had ceased to come to the house more often than mere politeness demanded. Her father regarded him “as one of those snotties,” no more and no less. And Ordith never missed an opportunity. He would come continually to the house. He would talk to Margaret throughout the long summer afternoons, talk about himself, his future, his ambitions--just such talk as, modestly spoken, flatters any woman into interest. He would ask her advice, making her feel that her decision was indeed of importance to him. He had an air of letting her share his secrets, and a power, that amounted almost to genius, of making his secrets not only important but amusing.