e back toward her, putting the sheets of
paper in order; and, as the door was closing, from the twiddly chair a
noise that seemed to couple God with the condemnation of silly souls.
When the young woman was once more at the typewriter she rose and said:
"Have you given him my card yet?"

The young woman looked at her surprised, as if she had broken some rule
of etiquette, and answered: "No."

"Then don't, please. I can see that he's too busy. I won't wait."

The young woman abstractedly placed a sheet of paper in her typewriter.

"Very well," she said. "Good morning!"

And before Nedda reached the door she heard the click-click of the
machine, reducing Mr. Cuthcott to legibility.

'I was stupid to come,' she thought. 'He must be terribly overworked.
Poor man! He does say lovely things!' And, crestfallen, she went along
the passages, and once more out into Floodgate Street. She walked along
it frowning, till a man who was selling newspapers said as she passed:
"Mind ye don't smile, lydy!"

Seeing that he was selling Mr. Cuthcott's paper, she felt for a coin to
buy one, and, while searching, scrutinized the newsvender's figure,
almost entirely hidden by the words:

GREAT HOUSING SCHEME

HOPE FOR THE MILLION!

on a buff-colored board; while above it, his face, that had not quite
blood enough to be scorbutic, was wrapped in the expression of those
philosophers to whom a hope would be fatal. He was, in fact, just what
he looked--a street stoic. And a dim perception of the great social
truth: "The smell of half a loaf is not better than no bread!" flickered
in Nedda's brain as she passed on. Was that what Derek was doing with
the laborers--giving them half the smell of a liberty that was not there?
And a sudden craving for her father came over her. He--he only, was any
good, because he, only, loved her enough to feel how distracted and
unhappy she was feeling, how afraid of what was coming. So, making for a
Tube station, she took train to Hampstead. . . .

It was past two, and Felix, on the point of his constitutional. He had
left Becket the day after Nedda's rather startling removal to Joyfields,
and since then had done his level best to put the whole Tryst affair,
with all its somewhat sinister relevance to her life and his own, out of
his mind as something beyond control. He had but imperfectly succeeded.

Flora, herself not too present-minded, had in these days occasion to
speak to