He was clearing from the table more buckram linings and patterns of paper, numbers of Myra's Journal and The Delineator. Already on his way to the cupboard he had put aside a red-bodiced dressmaker's "shape" of wood and wire. "What things?" he asked. "Those you were reading about. Greek, aren't they?" "Oh, the Greek room!... But those people, Bacchus and those, weren't people in the ordinary sense. Gods and goddesses, most of 'em; Bacchus was a god. That's what mythology means. I wish sometimes our course took in Greek literature, but it's a dead language after all. German's more good in modern life. It would be nice to know everything, but one has to select, you know. Hallo, I clean forgot; I brought you some grapes, Bessie; here they are, in this bag; we'll have 'em after tea, what?" "But," she said again after a pause, still looking at the grate, "they had their priests and priestesses, and followers and people, hadn't they? It was their things I was looking at--combs and brooches and hairpins, and things to cut their nails with. They're all in a glass case there. And they had safety-pins, exactly like ours." "Oh, they were a civilised people," said Ed cheerfully. "It all gives you an idea. I only hope you didn't tire yourself out. You'll soon be all right, of course, but you have to be careful yet. We'll have a clean tablecloth, shall we?" She had been seriously ill; her life had been despaired of; and somehow the young Polytechnic student seemed anxious to assure her that she was now all right again, or soon would be. They were to be married "as soon as things brightened up a bit," and he was very much in love with her. He watched her head and neck as he continued to lay the table, and then, as he crossed once more to the cupboard, he put his hand lightly in passing on her hair. She gave so quick a start that he too started. She must have been very deep in her reverie to have been so taken by surprise. "I say, Bessie, don't jump like that!" he cried with involuntary quickness. Indeed, had his hand been red-hot, or ice-cold, or taloned, she could not have turned a more startled, even frightened, face to him. "It was your touching me," she muttered, resuming her gazing into the grate. He stood looking anxiously down on her. It would have been better not to discuss her state, and he knew it; but in his anxiety he forgot it. "That jumpiness is the effect of your illness, you know. I shall be glad when it's all over. It's made you so odd."