obedient to a tradition. But she had dared! She had
willed--and the solid furniture had vanished away! And she was
adventurously free!

She went forward. At the corner of Child Street and High Street the new
Town Hall was rising to the skies. Already its walls were higher than
the highest house in the vicinity. And workmen were crawling over it,
amid dust, and a load of crimson bricks was trembling and revolving
upwards on a thin rope that hung down from the blue. Glimpses of London
had modified old estimates of her native town. Nevertheless, the new
Town Hall still appeared extraordinarily large and important to her.

She saw the detested Arthur Dayson in the distance of the street, and
crossed hurriedly to the Square, looking fixedly at the storeys above
the ironmonger's so that Arthur Dayson could not possibly catch her eye.
There was no sign of the _Five Towns Chronicle_ in the bare windows of
the second storey. This did not surprise her; but she was startled by
the absence of the Karkeek wire-blinds from the first-floor windows,
equally bare with those of the second. When she got to the entrance she
was still more startled to observe that the Karkeek brass-plate had been
removed. She climbed the long stairs apprehensively.

III

"Anybody here?" she called out timidly. She was in the clerk's office,
which was empty; but she could hear movements in another room. The place
seemed in process of being dismantled.

Suddenly George Cannon appeared in a doorway, frowning.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Cannon!"

"Good afternoon, Miss Lessways." He spoke with stiff politeness. His
face looked weary.

After a slight hesitation he advanced, and they shook hands. Hilda was
nervous. Her neglect of his letter now presented itself to her as
inexcusable. She thought: "If he is vexed about it I shall have to
humour him. I really can't blame him. He must think me very queer."

"I was wondering what had become of you," he said, amply polite, but not
cordial.

"Well," she said, "every day I was expecting you to call again, or to
send me a note or something.... And what with one thing and another--"

"I dare say your time's been fully occupied," he filled up her pause.
And she fancied that he spoke in a peculiar tone. She absurdly fancied
that he was referring to the time which she had publicly spent with
Edwin Clayhanger at the Centenary. She conceived that he might have seen
her and Edwin Clayhanger together.

"I had a lette