ng coming down here next
time."

"Michael is my name," he said, for he was rather distressed to think
that she would pass forever from his life supposing him to be called
Clive.

"As if I didn't know that," she said. "I remember, because it's a Jew
name."

"But it isn't," Michael contradicted.

"Jews are called that."

"Very likely," he admitted.

"Oh, well, it'll be all the same in a hundred years."

She picked up her white gloves, and swaggered across the crowded
beerhall. At the foot of the stairs she turned and waved them to him.
Then she disappeared.

Michael sat on in the Cafe d'Orange, waiting for Barnes, but he did not
arrive before closing-time; and when Michael was walking home, the tale
of Daisy gathered import, and he had a dreary feeling that her
suspicions were true. He did not feel depressed so much because he was
shocked by the notion of Barnes as a murderer (he thought that probably
murder was by no means the greatest evil he had done), as because he
feared the fancy of him in the hands of the police. It appalled him to
imagine that material hell of the trial. The bandage dropped from the
eyes of justice, and he saw her pig's-eyes mean, cowardly, revengeful;
and her scales were like a grocer's. He pitied Barnes in the clutches of
anthropocracy. What a ridiculous word: it probably did not exist. After
all, Daisy's story was ridiculous, too. Barnes had objected to himself's
hailing him as Meats: and there were plenty of reasons to account for
his dislike of Janie Filson's salute without supposing murder.
Nevertheless, back again, as softly and coaxingly as the thought used to
come to Michael when he was a small boy lying in bed, the thought of
murder maintained an innuendo of probability. Yet it was absurd to think
of murder on this summer night, with all these jingling hansoms and all
that fountainous sky of stars. Why, then, had Barnes not met him at the
Orange to-night? It was not like him to break an appointment when his
pocket might be hurt. What rumor of Cissie Cummings had traveled even to
Leppard Street?

Michael had reached Buckingham Palace Road, and he took the direction
for Pimlico; it was not too late to get into the house. He changed his
mind again and drove back to Cheyne Walk. Up in his bedroom, the
curiosity to know why Barnes had not kept the appointment recurred with
double force, and Michael after a search found the key of the house in
Leppard Street and went out again. It