Chapter 9

ALICE HEYDINGER.

When he arrived at the top of the building he stood aside for the only
remaining passenger to step out before him. It was the Miss Heydinger
who had addressed him, the owner of that gilt-edged book in the cover
of brown paper. No one else had come all the way up from the ground
floor. The rest of the load in the lift had emerged at the
"astronomical" and "chemical" floors, but these two had both chosen
"zoology" for their third year of study, and zoology lived in the
attics. She stepped into the light, with a rare touch of colour
springing to her cheeks in spite of herself. Lewisham perceived an
alteration in her dress. Perhaps she was looking for and noticed the
transitory surprise in his face.

The previous session--their friendship was now nearly a year old--it
had never once dawned upon him that she could possibly be pretty. The
chief thing he had been able to recall with any definiteness during
the vacation was, that her hair was not always tidy, and that even
when it chanced to be so, she was nervous about it; she distrusted
it. He remembered her gesture while she talked, a patting exploration
that verged on the exasperating. From that he went on to remember
that its colour was, on the whole, fair, a light brown. But he had
forgotten her mouth, he had failed to name the colour of her eyes. She
wore glasses, it is true. And her dress was indefinite in his
memory--an amorphous dinginess.

And yet he had seen a good deal of her. They were not in the same
course, but he had made her acquaintance on the committee of the
school Debating Society. Lewisham was just then discovering
Socialism. That had afforded a basis of conversation--an incentive to
intercourse. She seemed to find something rarely interesting in his
peculiar view of things, and, as chance would have it, he met her
accidentally quite a number of times, in the corridors of the schools,
in the big Education Library, and in the Art Museum. After a time
those meetings appear to have been no longer accidental.

Lewisham for the first time in his life began to fancy he had
conversational powers. She resolved to stir up his ambitions--an easy
task. She thought he had exceptional gifts and that she might serve to
direct them; she certainly developed his vanity. She had matriculated
at the London University and they took the Intermediate Examination in
Science together in July--she a little unwisely--which served, as
almost anything will serve in such cases, as a further link between
them. She failed, which in no way diminished Lewisham's regard for
her. On the examination days they discoursed about Friendship in
general, and things like that, down the Burlington Arcade during the