Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/85



Gareth Johns had just completed his final year at High School, where he had been something more than Lennie Colman's favourite pupil. He had been a sympathetic companion as well. Many times, after school was over in the afternoon, he had sat beside her desk talking with her; many times during the past four years he had called at her house in the evening. He had loaned her books from his private library and, after she had read them, they had discussed them together, not always agreeing, to be sure, but with whom else, Lennie asked herself, could she talk about such books as Jude the Obscure at all? She recalled the time that he had secured, with some difficulty, the copy of Lippincott's for July, 1890, which contained Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the strange excitement that had been their common feeling, following its perusal. They had believed that there was something clandestine in their intimacy over this book, that here was certainly a matter that demanded secrecy, but after, inadvertently, at least one of them had mentioned it casually in conversation with others only to discover that apparently no one in Maple Valley had ever heard of the book or