that in spite of this brave margin an irritation,
after he had gone, remained with her; a sense that presently became one
with a still sharper hatred of Mr. Buckton, who, on her friend's
withdrawal, had retired with the telegrams to the sounder and left her
the other work. She knew indeed she should have a chance to see them,
when she would, on file; and she was divided, as the day went on, between
the two impressions of all that was lost and all that was re-asserted.
What beset her above all, and as she had almost never known it before,
was the desire to bound straight out, to overtake the autumn afternoon
before it passed away for ever and hurry off to the Park and perhaps be
with him there again on a bench. It became for an hour a fantastic
vision with her that he might just have gone to sit and wait for her. She
could almost hear him, through the tick of the sounder, scatter with his
stick, in his impatience, the fallen leaves of October. Why should such
a vision seize her at this particular moment with such a shake? There
was a time--from four to five--when she could have cried with happiness
and rage.

Business quickened, it seemed, toward five, as if the town did wake up;
she had therefore more to do, and she went through it with little sharp
stampings and jerkings: she made the crisp postal-orders fairly snap
while she breathed to herself "It's the last day--the last day!" The
last day of what? She couldn't have told. All she knew now was that if
she _were_ out of the cage she wouldn't in the least have minded, this
time, its not yet being dark. She would have gone straight toward Park
Chambers and have hung about there till no matter when. She would have
waited, stayed, rung, asked, have gone in, sat on the stairs. What the
day was the last of was probably, to her strained inner sense, the group
of golden ones, of any occasion for seeing the hazy sunshine slant at
that angle into the smelly shop, of any range of chances for his wishing
still to repeat to her the two words she had in the Park scarcely let him
bring out. "See here--see here!"--the sound of these two words had been
with her perpetually; but it was in her ears to-day without mercy, with a
loudness that grew and grew. What was it they then expressed? what was
it he had wanted her to see? She seemed, whatever it was, perfectly to
see it now--to see that if she should just chuck the whole thing, should
have a great and beautiful courage,