"I won't have you here after eleven," she told him and quoted from _The Great Adventure_ on reputations, the coddling and neglect of them. "But if you have me at all----" he protested. "I'm English and I believe in compromise," she answered. So he stayed till eleven. It was a neat place and orderly with naked walls: he loved it as he loved its owner. When the washstand and bed had been hidden behind their curtain, the stray shoes kicked beneath the wardrobe, and the arm-chair drawn up to the gas-fire, there seemed to be nothing mean or sordid in the room despite the lack of space and the roof corner that jutted rudely in. What did it matter now if the window looked on to a back yard and a world of chimneys? "Why are you so wonderfully tidy?" Martin asked. "Don't you associate tidiness with me?" "No, you're too wild. Tidinesss is a petty virtue." "Well I confess it hasn't anything to do with my general character. I hope I'm not petty anyhow. It's sternly practical tidiness. I used to be lazy and find my stockings muddled up with the spoons, but it soon sickened me and now I have come to prefer the fag of clearing up to the discomfort of a muddle. Besides, if I'm going to have you here it oughtn't to be a beddy 'bed-sit,' but a sitty 'bed-sit.'" "Your precious reputation," he laughed. On another night she asked him what the Berrisfords thought about his absence from home. "I don't know and I don't think I care!" he answered. "Why? They must be interested in you, and you're very fond of them." "I dare say, but I can't think of them now." He drew her to him. "Freda, I'm too happy to care about them. I just can't imagine that the world has any other place but London, or any other people but you and me. Nothing else is real; nothing counts, not India or Oxford or anything." She yielded herself to him, but suddenly drew back. "You mustn't go and muddle things," she said conscientiously. "Supposing you fail next September, what would I feel like?" "I won't fail next September," he answered defiantly. "I'm glad you said that. You must be confident, much, much more confident. I'm sure you would have been happier if you had never been afraid of things." Ecstasy to know her gladness, to see her quick smile of confidence because he was confident! How could he have feared and doubted? He could not let her draw away: his arms must have her. "I'm never going to be afraid again," he said. "I know what was wrong now." "Well?" "I didn't care about anything. I didn't know what I wanted, while everything lay in front of me. I didn't feel, though I had all the world to feel about. I didn't love, though I had all the world to love. I just drifted. Now I have what I want."