"When you left your home to come to me. The start off was splendid. Who could dream it would fizzle out into--well, into this?" "But has it fizzled out? You're not"--she leaned across the table a little anxiously--"you're not scolding me?" "On the contrary, I'm trying to tell you all you are to me." "Oh," said Ingeborg. "I intend somehow to isolate my consciousness of your streaks--" "Streaks?" "As bees wax up a dead invader." "Oh--a dead invader?" "I don't, you see, believe in the damning effect of one specific outbreak, nor of one or two--" "You're not--you're not _really_ scolding me?" she asked, again a little anxiously. "On the contrary, I'm believing in and clinging to your dear innermost." "Oh," said Ingeborg. "I believe these streaks and patches and spots your superficial self has may be good in their ultimate effect, may save us, by interrupting, from those too serene spells that dogs'-ear love with usage and carelessness." She gazed at him, her mouth a little open. He lit yet another cigarette. "But it's rather like," he said, flinging the match away into a corner whither the young lady followed it and with a pursed reproachfulness trod it out, "it's rather like finding a crock of gold in one's garden and only being able to peep at it sometimes, and having to go away and work very hard for eleven shillings a week." She went on gazing at him in silence. "And not even for eleven shillings," said Ingram, reflecting on all he had already endured. "Work very hard for nothing." She leant across the table again. "I never _mean_ to be tiresome," she said. "Little star," he said stoutly. "It's always involuntary, my tiresomeness," she said, addressing him earnestly. "Oh, but it's so involuntary--and the dull surfaces I know I have, and the scaly imperfections--" He knocked the ashes off his cigarette with unnecessary vigour, almost as though they were bits of an annoying relative's body. "I'm warped, and encrusted, and blundering," went on Ingeborg, who was always thorough when it came to adjectives. In his irritable state, to have her abjectly cheapening herself vexed him as much as everything else she had done that day had vexed him. He might, under provocation, point out her weaknesses, but she must not point them out to him. He wanted to worship her, and she persisted in preventing him. Distressing to have a god who refuses to sit quiet on its pedestal, who insists on skipping off it to show you its shortcomings and beg your pardon. How could he make love to her if she talked like this? It would be like trying to make love to a Prayer-book. "Is it because it is Sunday," he said, "that you are impelled to acknowledge and confess your faults? You make me feel as if a verger had passed by and pushed me into a pew." "Well, but I _am_ warped and encrusted and blundering," she persisted. "You are not!" he said irritably. "Haven't I told you you are my star and my miracle?" "Yes, but--"