m; and she
sought with her trophy the refuge of the sounder.

CHAPTER XXI

It was repeated the next day; it went on for three days; and at the end
of that time she knew what to think. When, at the beginning, she had
emerged from her temporary shelter Captain Everard had quitted the shop;
and he had not come again that evening, as it had struck her he possibly
might--might all the more easily that there were numberless persons who
came, morning and afternoon, numberless times, so that he wouldn't
necessarily have attracted attention. The second day it was different
and yet on the whole worse. His access to her had become possible--she
felt herself even reaping the fruit of her yesterday's glare at Mr.
Buckton; but transacting his business with him didn't simplify--it could,
in spite of the rigour of circumstance, feed so her new conviction. The
rigour was tremendous, and his telegrams--not now mere pretexts for
getting at her--were apparently genuine; yet the conviction had taken but
a night to develop. It could be simply enough expressed; she had had the
glimmer of it the day before in her idea that he needed no more help than
she had already given; that it was help he himself was prepared to
render. He had come up to town but for three or four days; he had been
absolutely obliged to be absent after the other time; yet he would, now
that he was face to face with her, stay on as much longer as she liked.
Little by little it was thus clarified, though from the first flash of
his re-appearance she had read into it the real essence.

That was what the night before, at eight o'clock, her hour to go, had
made her hang back and dawdle. She did last things or pretended to do
them; to be in the cage had suddenly become her safety, and she was
literally afraid of the alternate self who might be waiting outside. _He_
might be waiting; it was he who was her alternate self, and of him she
was afraid. The most extraordinary change had taken place in her from
the moment of her catching the impression he seemed to have returned on
purpose to give her. Just before she had done so, on that bewitched
afternoon, she had seen herself approach without a scruple the porter at
Park Chambers; then as the effect of the rush of a consciousness quite
altered she had on at last quitting Cocker's, gone straight home for the
first time since her return from Bournemouth. She had passed his door
every night for weeks, but nothing w