I hope will not be for many weeks yet, though no one can tell when he
will have another call, I shall slip something suitably generous into
his hand, but I don't think about that. Must you be going? Good night,
dear Georgie. Peace! Om!"

His last backward glance as he went out of the front door revealed her
standing on one leg again, just as he had seen her first. He remembered
a print of a fakir at Benares, standing in that attitude; and if the
stream that flowed into the Avon could be combined with the Ganges, and
the garden into the burning ghaut, and the swooping swallows into the
kites, and the neat parlour-maid who showed him out, into a Brahmin,
and the Chinese gong that was so prominent an object in the hall into a
piece of Benares brassware, he could almost have fancied himself as
standing on the brink of the sacred river. The marigolds in the garden
required no transmutation....

Georgie had quite "to pull himself together," as he stepped round Mrs
Quantock's mulberry tree, and ten paces later round his own, before he
could recapture his normal evening mood, on those occasions when he was
going to dine alone. Usually these evenings were very pleasant and much
occupied, for they did not occur very often in this whirl of Riseholme
life, and it was not more than once a week that he spent a solitary
evening, and then, if he got tired of his own company, there were half
a dozen houses, easy of access where he could betake himself in his
military cloak, and spend a post-prandial hour. But oftener than not
when these occasions occurred, he would be quite busy at home, dusting
a little china, and rearranging ornaments on his shelves, and, after
putting his rings and handkerchief in the candle-bracket of the piano,
spending a serious hour (with the soft pedal down, for fear of
irritating Robert) in reading his share of such duets as he would be