ollowed her down the long stairs; but when they passed
into the open air he felt he had lost her irrevocably. The river was
now tinted with setting light, the balustrade of Waterloo Bridge
showed like lace-work, the glass roofing of Charing Cross station was
golden, and each spire distinct upon the moveless blue. The splashing
of a steamer sounded strange upon his ears. The "Citizen" passed! She
was crowded with human beings, all apparently alike. Then the eye
separated them. An old lady making her way down the deck, a young man
in gray clothes, a red soldier leaning over the rail, the captain
walking on the bridge.

Mike called a hansom; a few seconds more and she would pass from him
into London. He saw the horse's hooves, saw the cab appear and
disappear behind other cabs; it turned a corner, and she was gone.

CHAPTER III

Seven hours had elapsed since he had parted from Lily Young, and
these seven hours he had spent in restaurants and music-halls,
seeking in dissipation surcease of sorrow and disappointment. He had
dined at Lubi's, and had gone on with Lord Muchross and Lord Snowdown
to the Royal, and they had returned in many hansoms and with many
courtesans to drink at Lubi's. But his heart was not in gaiety, and
feeling he could neither break a hat joyously nor allow his own to be
broken good-humouredly, nor even sympathize with Dicky, the driver,
who had not been sober since Monday, he turned and left the place.

"This is why fellows marry," he said, when he returned home, and sat
smoking in the shadows--he had lighted only one lamp--depressed by
the loneliness of the apartment. And more than an hour passed before
he heard Frank's steps. Frank was in evening dress; he opened his
cigarette-case, lighted a cigarette, and sat down willing to be
amused. Mike told him the entire story with gestures and descriptive
touches; on the right was the bed with its curtains hanging superbly,
on the left the great hay-boats filling the window; and by insisting
on the cruelest aspects, he succeeded in rendering it almost
unbearable. But Frank had dined well, and as Lizzie had promised
to come to breakfast he was in excellent humour, and on the whole
relished the tale. He was duly impressed and interested by the
subtlety of the fancy which made Lily tell how she used to identify
her ideal lover while praying to Him, Him with the human ideal which
had led her from the cloister, and which she had come to seek in the
w