as about her a terrible
stillness and reserve, and in her little face, once so tender, the
suggestion of a possible hardness.

He was not aware that the stillness and reserve were in himself, nor
that the hardness was in his own face as it set in his indomitable
determination to stick it, and not to do the beastly thing, nor yet that
there were moments when that stillness and that set look terrified
Winny. Neither was he aware that Winny, under all her terror, had an
instinct that divined him and understood.

And as the months went on he saw less and less of her. Though he was
punctual at their corner in Oxford Street, he was always too late to
find Winny there. He gave that up, and began to haunt the door in
Starker's iron shutter at closing-time. He had found out that girl
clerks, what with chattering and putting on their hats and things, were
always a good ten minutes later than the men. He had seen fellows
(fellows from Woolridge's, some of them) hanging round the shutters of
the big draperies to meet the girls. By making a dash for it from
Woolridge's he could reach Starker's just in time to catch Winny as she
came out, delicately stepping through the little door in the great iron
shutter.

Evening after evening he was there and never caught her. She was off
before he could get through the door in his own shutter.

Then (it was one evening in August) he saw her. He was not making a dash
for it; he was strolling casually and without hope in the direction of
Starker's, and he saw her walking away, arm in arm with another girl, a
girl he had never seen before. He would have overtaken them but that the
presence of the girl deterred him.

He followed, losing them in the crowd, recovering, losing them again;
then they turned northward up a side street and were gone. He noticed
that the strange girl was taller than Winny by the head and shoulders,
and that she went lazily, deliberately, with sudden lingerings, and
always with a curious swinging movement of her hips. He had been close
upon Winny at the corner as they turned, so close that he could have
touched her. He thought she had seen him, but he could not be sure. He
was also aware of a large eye slued round toward him in a pretty profile
that lifted itself, deep-chinned, above Winny's head. Their behavior
agitated him, but he forbore to track them further. Decency told him
that that would be dishonorable.

The next evening and the next he watched the door in t