.
Supposing she did not visit the Orient again for a long time? It would
serve him right. Oh, why had he not managed to get in front of those
vehicles in time? He and she might have been driving together now;
instead of which he was stamping his way along this dull dark pavement.
How tall she had seemed, how beautiful in her black frock. At last he
knew why all this time women had left him cold. He loved her still. What
nonsense it had been for him to think he wanted to marry her in order to
rescue her. What priggish insolence! He loved her still; he loved her
now: he loved her: he loved her! The railings of Green Park rattled to
his stick. He loved her more passionately because the ghost of her whom
he had thought of with romantic embellishment all these years was but a
caricature of her reality. That image of gossamer which had floated
through his dreams was become nothing, now that again he had seen
herself with her tall neck and the aureole of her hair and the delicate
poise of her as she waited among those knock-kneed women on the
pavement. He brought his stick crashing down upon a bin of gravel by the
curb that it might clang forth his rage. In what direction had she
driven away? Even that he did not know. She might have driven past this
very lamp-post a few minutes back.

Here was Hyde Park Corner. In London it was overwhelming to speculate
upon a hansom's progress. Here already were main roads branching, and
these in their turn would branch, and others after them until the
imagination was baffled. Waste of time. Waste of time. He would not
picture her in any quarter of London. But never one night should escape
without his waiting for her at the Orient. Where was she now? He would
put her from his mind until they met. Supposing that round the corner of
that wall she were waiting, because the cab horse had slipped. How she
would turn toward him in her black dress. "I saw you outside the
Orient," he would say. She should know immediately that he was not
deceived about her life. So vividly had he conjured the scene that when
he rounded the wall on his way down Buckingham Palace Road, he was
disappointed to see no cab, no Lily standing perplexed; merely a tabid
woman clothed in a cobweb of crape, asleep over her tray of matches and
huddled against the wall of the King's garden. He put a sixpence among
her match-boxes, and wondered of what were her dark dreams. The stars
were blue as steel in the moonless sky above th