“Very interesting reading it might be made, too,” remarked Sherlock Holmes, sticking a small piece of plaster over the prick on his finger. “I have to be careful,” he continued, turning to me with a smile, “for I dabble with poisons a good deal.” He held out his hand as he spoke, and I noticed that it was all mottled over with similar pieces of plaster, and discoloured with strong acids.

“We came here on business,” said Stamford, sitting down on a high three-legged stool, and pushing another one in my direction with his foot. “My friend here wants to take diggings; and as you were complaining that you could get no one to go halves with you, I thought that I had better bring you together.”

Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. “I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,” he said, “which would suit us down to the ground. You don’t mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?”

“I always smoke ‘ship’s’ myself,” I answered.

“That’s good enough. I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?”

“By no means.”

“Let me me see — what are my other shortcomings? I get in the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I’ll soon be right. What have you to confess now? It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together.”

I laughed at this cross-examination. “I keep a bull pup,” I said, “and I object to rows because my nerves are shaken, and I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours, and I am extremely lazy. I have another set of vices when I’m well, but those are the principal ones at present.”

“Do you include violin playing in your category of rows?” he asked, anxiously.

“It depends on the player,” I answered. “A well-played violin is a treat for the gods — a badly played one —”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he cried, with a merry laugh. “I think we may consider the thing as settled — that is if the rooms are agreeable to you.”

“When shall we see them?”

“Call for me here at noon to-morrow, and we’ll go together and settle everything,” he answered.

“All right — noon exactly,” said I, shaking his hand.

We left him working among his chemicals, and we walked together towards my hotel.

“By the way,” I asked suddenly, stopping and turning upon Stamford, “how the deuce did he know that I had come from Afghanistan?”

My companion smiled an enigmatical smile. “That’s just his little peculiarity,” he said. “A good many people have wanted to know how he finds things out.”

“Oh! a mystery is it?” I cried, rubbing my hands. “This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together. ‘The proper study of mankind is man,’ you know.”

But Ursula had got her hand free. She turned to Birkin with a quick, almost jeering: ‘Good–bye,’ and she was opening the door before he had time to do it for her.

When she got outside the house she ran down the road in fury and agitation. It was strange, the unreasoning rage and violence Hermione roused in her, by her very presence. Ursula knew she gave herself away to the other woman, she knew she looked ill–bred, uncouth, exaggerated. But she did not care. She only ran up the road, lest she should go back and jeer in the faces of the two she had left behind. For they outraged her.

Next day Birkin sought Ursula out. It happened to be the half–day at the Grammar School. He appeared towards the end of the morning, and asked her, would she drive with him in the afternoon. She consented. But her face was closed and unresponding, and his heart sank.

The afternoon was fine and dim. He was driving the motor–car, and she sat beside him. But still her face was closed against him, unresponding. When she became like this, like a wall against him, his heart contracted.

His life now seemed so reduced, that he hardly cared any more. At moments it seemed to him he did not care a straw whether Ursula or Hermione or anybody else existed or did not exist. Why bother! Why strive for a coherent, satisfied life? Why not drift on in a series of accidents–like a picaresque novel? Why not? Why bother about human relationships? Why take them seriously–male or female? Why form any serious connections at all? Why not be casual, drifting along, taking all for what it was worth?

And yet, still, he was damned and doomed to the old effort at serious living.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘what I bought.’ The car was running along a broad white road, between autumn trees.

He gave her a little bit of screwed–up paper. She took it and opened it.

‘How lovely,’ she cried.

She examined the gift.

‘How perfectly lovely!’ she cried again. ‘But why do you give them me?’ She put the question offensively.

His face flickered with bored irritation. He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

‘I wanted to,’ he said, coolly.

‘But why? Why should you?’

‘Am I called on to find reasons?’ he asked.

There was a silence, whilst she examined the rings that had been screwed up in the paper.

‘I think they are BEAUTIFUL,’ she said, ‘especially this. This is wonderful–’

It was a round opal, red and fiery, set in a circle of tiny rubies.

‘You like that best?’ he said.

‘I think I do.’

‘I like the sapphire,’ he said.

‘This?’

It was a rose–shaped, beautiful sapphire, with small brilliants.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is lovely.’ She held it in the light. ‘Yes, perhaps it IS the best–’

‘The blue–’ he said.

‘Yes, wonderful–’