Evidently! Helen existed. And the whole omelette, from the melting of
the butter to the final steady glance into the saucepan, had not
occupied her more than six minutes--at most. She had tossed it off as he
might have tossed off a receipt for a week's rent. And the exquisite
thought in his mind, the thought of penetrating sweetness, was that
whence this delicacy had come, other and even rarer delicacies might
have come. All his past life seemed to him to be a miserable waste of
gloomy and joyless years.

"Do you like it?" she inquired.

He paused, as though reflecting whether he liked it or not. "Ay," he
said, judicially, "it's none so bad. I could do a bit more o' that."

"Well," she urged him, "do help yourself. Take it all. I shan't eat any
more."

"Sure?" he said, trembling lest she might change her mind.

Then he ate the remaining half of the omelette, making five-sixths in
all. He glanced at her surreptitiously, in her fine dress, on which was
not a single splash or stain. He might have known that so extraordinary
and exotic a female person would not concoct anything so trite as a
Yorkshire pudding or scrambled eggs.

Not till the omelette was an affair of the past (so far as _his_ plate
was concerned) did he begin to attend to his tea--his tea which
sustained a mystery as curious as, and decidedly more sinister than, the
mystery of the omelette.