long absence had prevented
any fresh shoots of friendship being grafted, I found myself alone in
London. I need say no more.

One evening I was walking through the streets in a despondent mood, as
had become my habit. By chance I read the name of a street into which I
had turned to avoid a more crowded thoroughfare. It was that in which
Miss Metford lived. I knew that she had returned to town, for she had
briefly acquainted me with the fact on a postcard written some days
previously.

Here was a chance of distraction. This girl's spontaneous gaiety, which
I found at first displeasing, was what I wanted to help me to shake off
the gloomy incubus of thought oppressing me. It was hardly within the
proprieties to call upon her at such an hour, but it could not matter
very much, when the girl's own ideas were so unconventional. She had
independent means, and lived apart from her family in order to be rid of
domestic limitations. She had told me that she carried a
latch-key--indeed she had shown it to me with a flourish of triumph--and
that she delighted in free manners. Free manners, she was careful to
add, did not mean bad manners. To my mind the terms were synonymous.
When opposite her number I decided to call, and, having knocked at the
door, was told that Miss Metford was at home.

"Hallo, Marcel! Glad to see you," she called out, somewhat stridently
for my taste. Her dress was rather mannish, as usual. In lieu of her
out-door tunic she wore a smoking-jacket. When I entered she was sitting
in an arm-chair, with her feet on a music-stool. She arose so hastily
that the music-stool was overturned, and allowed to lie where it fell.

"What is the matter?" she asked, concerned. "Have you seen a ghost?"

"I think I have seen many ghosts of late," I said, "and they have not
been good company. I was passing your door, and I have come in for
comfort."

She crossed the room and poured out some whisky from a decanter which
was standing on a side-board. Then she opened a bottle of soda-water
with a facility which suggested practice. I was relieved to think that
it was not Natalie who was my hostess. Handing me the glass, she said
peremptorily:

"Drink that. That is right. Give me the glass. Now smoke. Do I allow
smoking here? Pah! I smoke here myself."

I lit a cigar and sat down beside her. The clouds began to lift from my
brain and float off in the blue smoke wreaths. We talked on ordinary
topics without my once noticing