'Beauty' had been a disappointment. She had met him two or three times since their first evening out. That night Neville, who was a young man of the world, had pressed his suit so delicately, preserving in so cat-like a manner his lines of retreat, that she had not been able to snub him when inclined to. He had a small private income and knew how to make the best of his good looks by means of gentle manners and smart clothes. In the insurance office where he was one of those clerks who have lately evolved from the junior stage, he was nothing in particular and earned ten pounds a month. He had furnished two rooms on the Chelsea edge of Kensington, belonged to an inexpensive club in St James's, had been twice to Brussels and once to Paris; he smoked Turkish cigarettes, deeming Virginia common; he subscribed to a library in connection with Mudie's, and knew enough of the middle classes to exaggerate his impression of them into the smart set. Perhaps he tried a little too much to be a gentleman.
Neville Brown was strongly attracted to Victoria. He had vainly tried to draw her out, and scented the lie in her carefully concocted story. He knew enough to feel that she was at heart one of those women he met 'in society,' perhaps a little better. Thus she puzzled him extremely, for she was not even facile; he could hold her hand; she had not refused him kisses, but he was afraid to secure his grip on her as a man carrying a butterfly stirs not a finger for fear it should escape.
Victoria turned all this over lazily. Her instinct told her what manner of man was Neville, for he hardly concealed his desires. Indeed their relations had something of the charm of a masqued ball. She saw well enough that Neville was not likely to remain content with kisses, and viewed the inevitable battle with mixed feelings. She liked him; indeed, in certain moods and when his blue eyes were at their bluest, he attracted her magnetically. The reminiscent scent of Turkish tobacco on her lips always drew her back towards him; and yet she was of her class, shy of love, of all that is illicit because unacknowledged. She knew very well that Neville would hardly ask her to marry him and that she would refuse if he did; she knew less well what she would do if he asked her to love him. When she analysed their relation she always found that all lay on the lap of the gods.