pleased with himself. In his world, as in a fish's, there was but
his own swimming self: and if he chanced to have something swimming
alongside and doing him credit, why, so much the more complacently
he smiled.
He walked stiff and erect, with his head pressed rather back, so
that he always seemed to be advancing from the head and shoulders,
in a flat kind of advance, horizontal. He did not seem to be walking
with his whole body. His manner was oddly gallant, with a gallantry
that completely missed the individual in the woman, circled round
her and flew home gratified to his own hive. The way he raised his
hat, the way he inclined and smiled flatly, even rather excitedly,
as he talked, was all a little discomforting and comical.
He left her at the shop door, saying:
"I shall see you again, I hope."
"Oh, yes," she replied, rattling the door anxiously, for it was
locked. She heard her father's step at last tripping down the shop.
"Good-evening, Mr. Houghton," said Albert suavely and with a certain
confidence, as James peered out.
"Oh, good-evening!" said James, letting Alvina pass, and shutting
the door in Albert's face.
"Who was that?" he asked her sharply.
"Albert Witham," she replied.
"What has _he_ got to do with you?" said James shrewishly.
"Nothing, I hope."
She fled into the obscurity of Manchester House, out of the grey
summer evening. The Withams threw her off her pivot, and made her
feel she was not herself. She felt she didn't know, she couldn't
feel, she was just scattered and decentralized. And she was rather
afraid of the Witham brothers. She might be their victim. She
intended to avoid them.
The following days she saw Albert, in his Norfolk jacket and flannel
trousers and his straw hat, strolling past several times and looking
in through the shop door and up at the upper windows. But she hid
herself thoroughly. When she went out, it was by the back way. So
she avoided him.
But on Sunday evening, there he sat, rather stiff and brittle in the
old Withams' pew, his head pressed a little back, so that his face
and neck seemed slightly flattened. He wore very low, turn-down
starched collars that showed all his neck. And he kept looking up at
her during the service--she sat in the choir-loft--gazing up at her
with apparently love-lorn eyes and a faint, intimate smile--the sort
of _je-sais-tout_ look of a private swain. Arthur also occasionally
cast a judicious eye on her, as if she were a chimney that needed
repairing, and he must estimate the cost, and whether it was worth
it.
Sure enough, as she came out through the narrow choir gate into
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