At last, throwing down the duster, he sprang towards her, driven by the blind, unconscious cunning of a predatory animal and by sheer, exasperated desire. But the girl slipped away from him, laughing like a hunted oread, and, lifting her great broom between them, escaped round the edge of the parlour-table, from which she had removed the cloth. Red in the face now, and breathing hard and fast, he pursued her obstinately; and they both ran, panting and hot, round and round that polished expanse of wood, that mocked him like a shining shield. In her flight she dropped the broom, and he in his clumsy pursuit stumbled and almost fell over it.

Then he gave up; because, in a single flash of the dark-lantern of his self-esteem, he saw this whole incident between them just as Bob Weevil would have seen it, had he been pressing his inquisitive face against their windowpane. But as they stood there, stock-still, panting like two animals and staring at each other across the polished wood, it came into his head that if there had been nothing more subtle than that table between them, this game of theirs would have been full of a rich delight for both of them, Bob Weevil or no Bob Weevil!