, there was no choice but to
accept John's hints, and hold apart as much as was possible without
absolute breach of friendly relations. Nor could he bring himself to
approach Clara. It was often in his mind to write to her; had he obeyed
the voice of his desire he would have penned such letters as only the
self-abasement of a passionate lover can dictate. But herein, too, the
strain of sternness that marked his character made its influence felt.
He said to himself that the only hope of Clara's respecting him lay in
his preservation of the attitude he had adopted, and as the months went
on he found a bitter satisfaction in adhering so firmly to his purpose.
The self-flattery with which no man can dispense whispered assurance
that Clara only thought the more of him the longer he held aloof. When
the end of July came, he definitely prescribed to his patience a trial
of yet one more month. Then he would write Clara a long letter, telling
her what it had cost him to keep silence, and declaring the constancy
he devoted to her.

This resolve he registered whilst at work one morning. The triumphant
sunshine, refusing to be excluded even from London workshops, gleamed
upon his tools and on the scraps of jewellery before him; he looked up
to the blue sky, and thought with heavy heart of many a lane in Surrey
and in Essex where he might be wandering but for this ceaseless
necessity of earning the week's wage. A fly buzzed loudly against the
grimy window, and by one of those associations which time and change
cannot affect, he mused himself back into boyhood. The glimpse before
him of St. John's Arch aided the revival of old impressions; his hand
ceased from its mechanical activity, and he was absorbed in a waking
dream, when a voice called to him and said that he was wanted. He went
down to the entrance, and there found Mrs. Hewett. Her coming at all
was enough to signal some disaster, and the trouble on her face caused
Sidney to regard her with silent interrogation.

'I couldn't help comin' to you,' she began, gazing at him fixedly. 'I
know you can't do anything, but I had to speak to somebody, an' I know
nobody better than you. It's about Clara.'

'What about her?'

'She's left Mrs. Tubbs. They had words about Bank-holiday last night,
an' Clara went off at once. Mrs. Tubbs thought she'd come 'ome, but
this mornin' her box was sent for, an' it was to be took to a house in
Islington. An' then Mrs. Tubbs came an' told me. An' t