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lations with Griffiths. He listened with a smile on his lips,
feigning an equanimity which quite deceived the dull-wit-
ted boy who talked to him. The week-end she spent with
Griffiths at Oxford inflamed rather than extinguished her
sudden passion; and when Griffiths went home, with a feel-
ing that was unexpected in her she determined to stay in
Oxford by herself for a couple of days, because she had
been so happy in it. She felt that nothing could induce her
to go back to Philip. He revolted her. Griffiths was taken
aback at the fire he had aroused, for he had found his two
days with her in the country somewhat tedious; and he had
no desire to turn an amusing episode into a tiresome af-
fair. She made him promise to write to her, and, being an
honest, decent fellow, with natural politeness and a desire
to make himself pleasant to everybody, when he got home
he wrote her a long and charming letter. She answered it
with reams of passion, clumsy, for she had no gift of ex-
pression, ill-written, and vulgar; the letter bored him, and
when it was followed next day by another, and the day after
by a third, he began to think her love no longer flattering
but alarming. He did not answer; and she bombarded him
with telegrams, asking him if he were ill and had received
her letters; she said his silence made her dreadfully anxious.
He was forced to write, but he sought to make his reply as
casual as was possible without being offensive: he begged
her not to wire, since it was difficult to explain telegrams to
his mother, an old-fashioned person for whom a telegram
was still an event to excite tremor. She answered by return
of post that she must see him and announced her inten-

Of Human Bondage