d exalted him still higher
upon his determination; his flight from Leppard Street and his return to
Cheyne Walk had helped to strengthen his hopefulness. Now he had
returned to this circumambient crowd, looking round as each newcomer
came up the steps, and all the while horribly aware that this evening
Lily was not coming to the Orient. He had never been upset like this
since his resolve was taken. The glimpse of her last night had made him
very impatient, and he reviled himself again for having been such a fool
as to let her escape. He fell in a rage with his immobility here in
London. He demanded why it was not possible to swirl in widening circles
round the city until he found her. He was no longer content to remain in
this aquarium, stuck like a mollusc to the side of the tank. He wanted
to see her again. He was fretful for her slow contemptuous walk and her
debonair smile. He wanted to see her again. Already this quest was
becoming the true torment of love. Every single other person in sight
was a dreary automaton in whom he took no trace of interest. Every
movement, every laugh, every shadow made him repine at its uselessness
to him. All those years at Oxford of dreams and hesitations had let him
store up within himself a very fury of love. He had been living falsely
all this time: there had never been one dull hour which could not have
been enchanted by her to the most glorious hour imaginable. He had
realized that when he saw her last night; he had realized all the waste,
all the deadness, all the idiotic philosophy and impotence of these
years without her. How the fancy of her vexed him now; how easily could
he in his frustration knock down the individuals of this senseless
restless crowd, one after another, like the dummies of humanity they
were.

The last tableau of the ballet had dissolved behind the falling curtain.
Lily was not here to-night, and he hurried out into Piccadilly. She must
be somewhere close at hand. It was impossible for her to come casually
like that to the Orient and afterward to disappear for weeks. Or was she
a man's mistress, the mistress of a man of forty? He could picture him.
He would be a stockbroker, the sort of man whom one saw in first-class
railway carriages traveling up to town in the morning and reading The
Financial Times. He would wear a hideous orchid in his buttonhole and
take her to Brighton for week-ends. He knew just the shade of bluish
pink that his cheeks were; and th