far more influence with Marion than anything I had to say. Before all
things I coveted her grip upon Marion's inaccessible mind.

In the workroom at Smithie's, I gathered, they always spoke of me
demurely as "A Certain Person." I was rumoured to be dreadfully
"clever," and there were doubts--not altogether without
justification--of the sweetness of my temper.

II

Well, these general explanations will enable the reader to understand
the distressful times we two had together when presently I began to feel
on a footing with Marion and to fumble conversationally for the mind and
the wonderful passion I felt, obstinately and stupidity, must be in her.
I think she thought me the maddest of sane men; "clever," in fact,
which at Smithie's was, I suppose, the next thing to insanity, a word
intimating incomprehensible and incalculable motives.... She could be
shocked at anything, she misunderstood everything, and her weapon was
a sulky silence that knitted her brows, spoilt her mouth and robbed her
face of beauty. "Well, if we can't agree, I don't see why you should
go on talking," she used to say. That would always enrage me beyond
measure. Or, "I'm afraid I'm not clever enough to understand that."

Silly little people! I see it all now, but then I was no older than
she and I couldn't see anything but that Marion, for some inexplicable
reason, wouldn't come alive.

We would contrive semi-surreptitious walks on Sunday, and part
speechless with the anger of indefinable offences. Poor Marion! The
things I tried to put before her, my fermenting ideas about theology,