her husband, was glad when I rose
to take my leave. The sweet, clear candour of her face had given
place, I thought, to something not wholly unlike querulousness. But, I
had one glance from her eyes, as she took my hand, which seemed to me
to say:

'God speed! I understand.'

It may have meant nothing, but I like to think it meant understanding.

From Cynthia's house I went on to Heron's lodging, for I had a horror
of being 'seen off,' and wished to bid my friend good-bye in his own
rooms. Our talk was constrained, I remember. The stress of my
uprooting affected me far more than I knew at the time. Heron regarded
my going with grave disapproval as a crazy step. He regretted it, too;
and such feelings always tended to exaggerate his tendency to
taciturnity, or to a harsh, sardonic vein in speech.

As his way was in such a matter, Heron calmly ignored my stipulation
about being 'seen off,' and he was standing beside the curb when I
stepped out of my cab at Fenchurch Street Station next morning. There
was nearly half an hour to spare, we found, before the boat train
started.

'The correct thing would be a stirrup-cup,' growled Heron.

'The very thing,' I said; conversation in such a place, and in such
circumstances, proving quite impossible for me. By an odd chance I
recalled my first experiences upon arrival at this same mean and
dolorous station, more than twenty years previously. 'We will go to
the house in which the "genelmun orduder bawth,"' I said, and led
Heron across into the Blue Boar.

The forced jocularity of these occasions is apt to be a pitifully
wooden business, and I suppose it was a relief to us both when my
train began slowly to move.

'By the way--I had forgotten,' said Heron, very gruffly. 'Take this
trifle with you-- May be of some use. Good-bye! Look me up as soon as
you get back. I give you a year--or nearly.'

He waved his hand jerkily, and was gone. He had given me the silver
cigarette-case which he had used for all the years of our
acquaintance. It bore his initials in one corner, and under these I
now saw engraved: 'To N. F., 1890-1910.' I do not recall any small
incident that impressed me more than this.

I still moved through a mist. The voices of my travelling companions
seemed oddly small and remote. I felt as though encased and insulated,
in some curious way, from the everyday life about me. And this mood
possessed me all through that day. Through all the customary bustle of
an