Chapter 1 - Page 2

offer deferential and condemnatory remarks as to the plaster-of-Paris
mouldings. You know how one addresses a young lady who is obviously
capable of taking care of herself. That was how I had come across her.
She had smiled at the gabble of the cathedral guide as he showed the
obsessed troop, of which we had formed units, the place of martyrdom of
Blessed Thomas, and her smile had had just that quality of superseder's
contempt. It had pleased me then; but, now that she smiled thus past
me--it was not quite at me--in the crooked highways of the town, I was
irritated. After all, I was somebody; I was not a cathedral verger. I
had a fancy for myself in those days--a fancy that solitude and brooding
had crystallised into a habit of mind. I was a writer with high--with
the highest--ideals. I had withdrawn myself from the world, lived
isolated, hidden in the countryside, lived as hermits do, on the hope of
one day doing something--of putting greatness on paper. She suddenly
fathomed my thoughts: "You write," she affirmed. I asked how she knew,
wondered what she had read of mine--there was so little.

"Are you a popular author?" she asked.

"Alas, no!" I answered. "You must know that."

"You would like to be?"

"We should all of us like," I answered; "though it is true some of us
protest that we aim for higher things."

"I see," she said, musingly. As far as I could tell she was coming to
some decision. With an instinctive dislike to any such proceeding as
regarded myself, I tried to cut across her unknown thoughts.

"But, really--" I said, "I am quite a commonplace topic. Let us talk
about yourself. Where do you come from?"

It occurred to me again that I was intensely unacquainted with her type.
Here was the same smile--as far as I could see, exactly the same smile.
There are fine shades in smiles as in laughs, as in tones of voice. I
seemed unable to hold my tongue.

"Where do you come from?" I asked. "You must belong to one of the new
nations. You are a foreigner, I'll swear, because you have such a fine
contempt for us. You irritate me so that you might almost be a Prussian.
But it is obvious that you are of a new nation that is beginning to find
itself."

"Oh, we are to inherit the earth, if that is what you mean," she said.

"The phrase is comprehensive," I said. I was determined not to give
myself away. "Where in the world do you come from?" I repeated. The
question, I was quite conscious, would have sufficed, but in the hope,
I suppose, of establishing my intellectual superiority, I continued:

"You know, fair