Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/68

54 looked up again it was gone. "What do you mean by a 'made' man?" he asked.

"Oh, not the usual thing, but the real thing. A man one needn't worry about."

"Thank you! The man not worried about is the man who muffs it."

"That's a horrid, selfish speech," said Rose Armiger. "You don't deserve I should tell you what a success I now feel that you'll be."

"Well, darling," Dennis answered, "that matters the less as I know exactly the occasion on which I shall fully feel it for myself."

Rose manifested no further sense of this occasion than to go straight on with her idea. She placed her arm with frank friendship on his shoulder.. It drew him closer, and he recovered his grasp of her free hand. With his want of stature and presence, his upward look at her, his small, smooth head, his seasoned sallowness and simple eyes, he might at this instant have struck a spectator as a figure actually younger and slighter than the ample, accomplished girl whose gesture protected and even a little patronised him. But in her vision of him she none the less clearly found full warrant for