lost on Madeleine Wade.

They had turned their steps homewards, and were drawing near the edge
of the wood, when, through the tree-trunks, which here were bare and
far apart, they saw two people walking arm in arm; and on turning a
corner found the couple coming straight towards them, on the same path
as themselves. In the full flush of his talk, Maurice Guest did not at
first grasp what was about to happen. He had ended the sentence he was
at, and begun another, before the truth broke on him. Then he
stuttered, lost the thread of his thought, was abruptly silent; and
what he had been going to say, and what, a moment before, had seemed of
the utmost importance, was never said. His companion did not seem to
notice his preoccupation; she gave an exclamation of what sounded like
surprise, and herself looked steadily at the approaching pair. Thus
they went forward to a meeting which the young man had imagined to
himself in many ways, but not in this. The moment he had waited for had
come; and now he wished himself miles away. Meanwhile, they walked on,
in a brutal, matter-of-fact fashion, and at a fairish pace, though each
step he took was an event, and his feet were as heavy and awkward as if
they did not belong to him.

The other two sauntered towards them, without haste. The man she was
with had his arm through hers, her hand in his left hand, while in his
right he twirled a cane. They were not speaking; she looked before her,
rather listlessly, with dark, indifferent eyes. To see this, to see
also that she was taller and broader than he had believed, and in full
daylight somewhat sallow, Maurice had first to conquer an aversion to
look at all, on account of the open familiarity of their attitude. It
was not like this that he had dreamt of finding her. And so it happened
that when, without a word to him, his companion crossed the path and
confronted the other two, he only lingered for an instant, in an agony
of indecision, and then, by an impulse over which he had no control,
walked on and stood out of earshot.

He drew a deep breath, like one who has escaped a danger; but almost
simultaneously he bit his lip with mortification: could any power on
earth make it clear to him why he had acted in this way? All his
thoughts had been directed towards this moment for so long, only to
take this miserable end. A string of contemptuous epithets for himself
rose to his lips. But when he looked back at the group, the reason of
h