ust congratulate you," he said. "It was news to me." He saw her face
change, but only to become graver than before.

"My engagement?" she asked. "Yes, I am going to marry William Rodney."

Ralph remained standing with his hand on the back of a chair in absolute
silence. Abysses seemed to plunge into darkness between them. He looked
at her, but her face showed that she was not thinking of him. No regret
or consciousness of wrong disturbed her.

"Well, I must go," he said at length.

She seemed about to say something, then changed her mind and said
merely:

"You will come again, I hope. We always seem"--she hesitated--"to be
interrupted."

He bowed and left the room.

Ralph strode with extreme swiftness along the Embankment. Every muscle
was taut and braced as if to resist some sudden attack from outside. For
the moment it seemed as if the attack were about to be directed
against his body, and his brain thus was on the alert, but without
understanding. Finding himself, after a few minutes, no longer under
observation, and no attack delivered, he slackened his pace, the pain
spread all through him, took possession of every governing seat, and met
with scarcely any resistance from powers exhausted by their first effort
at defence. He took his way languidly along the river embankment, away
from home rather than towards it. The world had him at its mercy. He
made no pattern out of the sights he saw. He felt himself now, as he had
often fancied other people, adrift on the stream, and far removed from
control of it, a man with no grasp upon circumstances any longer. Old
battered men loafing at the doors of public-houses now seemed to be his
fellows, and he felt, as he supposed them to feel, a mingling of envy
and hatred towards those who passed quickly and certainly to a goal of
their own. They, too, saw things very thin and shadowy, and were wafted
about by the lightest breath of wind. For the substantial world, with
its prospect of avenues leading on and on to the invisible distance,
had slipped from him, since Katharine was engaged. Now all his life
was visible, and the straight, meager path had its ending soon enough.
Katharine was engaged, and she had deceived him, too. He felt for
corners of his being untouched by his disaster; but there was no
limit to the flood of damage; not one of his possessions was safe now.
Katharine had deceived him; she had mixed herself with every thought of
his, and reft of her they see