ONE:"We went along the street, stopping now and then to look at something, and in a little while we came to a tea-house which stood in the middle of a pond of water. The house was rather pretty, and the balconies around it were nice, but you should have seen the water. It was covered with a green scum, such as you may see on a stagnant pool anywhere in the world, and the odor from it was anything but sweet. Fred said it was the same water that was let into the pool when they first made it. The guide says the house is a hundred years old, and I should think the water was quite as old as the house; or perhaps it is some second-hand water that they bought cheap, and if so it may be very ancient. We went into the house and sat down to take some tea. They gave us some tea-leaves, on which they poured hot water, and then covered the cup over for a minute or two. Each of us had his portion of tea separate from all the others. The tea was steeped in the cup, and when we wanted more we poured hot water on again. Then they brought little cakes and melon-seeds, with salt to eat with the seeds. Our guide took some of the seeds, and we ate one or two each to see how they tasted. I can't recommend them, and don't think there is any danger they will ever be introduced into the United States as a regular article of diet."Now, if our Congress will pass a law abolishing the feather pillow all over the United States, and commanding everybody to sleep on the Japanese one, it would make every man, woman, and child get up at least an hour earlier every day. For forty millions of people this would make a gain of forty million hours daily, and that would be equal to forty-five thousand years. Just think what an advantage that would be to the country, and how much more we could accomplish than we do now. Isn't it a grand idea?"
ONE:Alice sat down again by the fire, and picked up a piece of buttered bun with a semicircular bite out of it which had fallen on the carpet. He must have been in the middle of that mastication when the fiasco began.... Yet, he could not have been, for he had begun to smoke. Perhaps he took another bun after he had finished his cigarette.... She considered this with a detached curiosity; it seemed to occupy all her mind. Then the boy covered with buttons came in to remove the tea-tray, and she noticed he had a piece of sticking plaster in the middle of his forehead. That was interesting too and curious.... And then she had a firm, an absolute conviction that Mr Silverdale had not gone away, that he was waiting in the hall, unable to tear himself from{213} her, and yet forbidden by his pride to come back. He had only left the room a couple of minutes; and surely she would find him seated in one of the Gothic chairs in the hall, with his hand over his face. She must go to him; their eyes would meet, and somehow or other the awful misunderstanding and estrangement in which they had parted would melt away. He would say, Life is too strong for me; farewell the celibacy of the clergy, or something like that: or he would hold her hand for a long, a very long time, and perhaps whisper, Then blessings on the fallings out, or Whatever happens, nothing must interrupt our friendship. Perhaps the farewell to the celibacy of the clergy was an exaggerated optimism, but she would be so content, so happy with much less than that (provided always that he did not say his farewell to celibacy with Julia Fyson). She would be enraptured to continue on the old terms, now that she understood what he meant and what he did not mean. And perhaps she had spoiled it all, so that he would never again hold her hand or whisper to her, or kiss her with that sort of tender and fraternal affection as once in the vestry when she had made her guileless confession to him. It was a brother-kiss, a priest-kiss, coming almost from realms above, and now she had thrown that in his teeth. She had altogether failed to understand him, him and his friendship, his comradeship (and his pawings). In the{214} fading of her anger she longed for all that which she had thought meant so much, but which she prized now for its own sake. Surely she would find him still lingering in the hall, sorrowful and unhappy and misunderstood, but not reproachful, for he was too sublime for that. He had said he was infinitely grieved several times, and he would be great enough to forgive her. Perhaps he would be too deeply hurt to make any of those appropriate little speeches she had devised for him, and if so, the reconciliation for which already she yearned, the re-establishment of their relations on the old maudlin lines, must come from her initiative. Already with that curious passion some women have for being beaten and ill-treated, she longed to humble herself, to entreat his forgiveness.
ONE:"I suppose we might call him a romanticist," said I, "might we not?""How, then, did she know?"
