"Your hat will be spoiled if you don't take your share of the umbrella," she said. It was a silk hat, and she supposed that silk hats cost money. A fine, persistent rain was falling. She thought that he answered that it didn't matter. "Then you might at least turn your trousers up." Her own shabby old grey coat didn't matter, but his trousers---- He seemed to be on the point of replying that they didn't matter either, but changed his mind. He stooped and turned them up. She held the umbrella while he did so, and then gave it to him again, replacing her right hand where it had been--on his left forearm. It was on these mere externals of him--his hat, his coat, his trousers, his boots--that she had hardly for a moment ceased to feed her eyes. Anything else might wait; for the present the stuff of his sleeve was more to her than the stuff of his soul. She luxuriated shamelessly in the smallest actualities of his presence; why, even mirth stood but a remove away. His overcoat, for example: it was not that old tawny one that had made him so much like a lion, but it was an old one for all that; was she _never_ to see her man in a new overcoat? Jim and his overcoats! But the rest of him was beyond criticism. Certainly he must be making money. She wished she could have called money to him with a wand, conjured it to him, as much as ever he wanted. Had it not been that she would have had to take her hand from his sleeve, she would have liked to step back to look at his great church-door of a back again. Of his face she could see little, but that did not prevent her looking until it would hardly have surprised her had he flushed and said, "Don't gloat over me like that." His hat was tilted down, the large peaks of his overcoat collar projected like wings. No, she did not want to know what he thought or felt; bother all that part of him! When her thirsty senses had drunk their full, then would be time enough for the other things. They were walking somewhere behind the Horse Guards. Stretching before them was the long, empty avenue of the Mall. She was looking at the perspective of lamps and trees and drizzle, when suddenly he spoke. Instantly all her faculties seemed to become one overgrown faculty, that of hearing. Not that he was saying anything; he was, as a matter of fact, only asking her whether she was warm; and she replied, "Quite." She was almost amused that he should ask. His nearness warmed her more than did her garments. Her hand thrilled deliciously on his sleeve again.... Oh, the satisfaction of that, just that, after all her past inquisitions into his soul!