yokes by an assiduous use of eyes and note-book in the museum, and went
home and traced out the captured forms on the foundation material. "I
don't get much," said Marion, "but it's interesting, and in the busy
times we work all day. Of course the workgirls are dreadfully common,
but we don't say much to them. And Smithie talks enough for ten."

I quite understood the workgirls were dreadfully common.

I don't remember that the Walham Green menage and the quality of these
people, nor the light they threw on Marion, detracted in the slightest
degree at that time from the intent resolve that held me to make her
mine. I didn't like them. But I took them as part of the affair. Indeed,
on the whole, I think they threw her up by an effect of contrast; she
was so obviously controlling them, so consciously superior to them.

More and more of my time did I give to this passion that possessed me. I
began to think chiefly of ways of pleasing Marion, of acts of devotion,
of treats, of sumptuous presents for her, of appeals she would
understand. If at times she was manifestly unintelligent, in her
ignorance became indisputable, I told myself her simple instincts were
worth all the education and intelligence in the world. And to this day
I think I wasn't really wrong about her. There was something
extraordinarily fine about her, something simple and high, that
flickered in and out of her ignorance and commonness and limitations
like the tongue from the mouth of a snake....

One night I was privileged to meet her and bring her home from an
entertainment at the Birkbeck Institute. We came back on the underground
railway and we travelled first-class--that being the highest class
available. We were alone in the carriage, and for the first time I