e shift at Bury Street if--" She did not finish the
thought, but the blood came up in her cheeks. "Take care of Ossy,
darling!" She ran down, caught up the letter, and hastened away to the
station. In the train, her cheeks still burned. Might not this first
visit to his chambers be like her old first visit to the little house in
Chelsea? She took the letter out. How she hated that large, scrawly
writing for all the thoughts and fears it had given her these past
months! If that girl knew how much anxiety and suffering she had caused,
would she stop writing, stop seeing him? And Gyp tried to conjure up her
face, that face seen only for a minute, and the sound of that clipped,
clear voice but once heard--the face and voice of one accustomed to have
her own way. No! It would only make her go on all the more. Fair game,
against a woman with no claim--but that of love. Thank heaven she had
not taken him away from any woman--unless--that girl perhaps thought she
had! Ah! Why, in all these years, had she never got to know his
secrets, so that she might fight against what threatened her? But would
she have fought? To fight for love was degrading, horrible! And yet--if
one did not? She got up and stood at the window of her empty carriage.
There was the river--and there--yes, the very backwater where he had
begged her to come to him for good. It looked so different, bare and
shorn, under the light grey sky; the willows were all polled, the reeds
cut down. And a line from one of his favourite sonnets came into her
mind:

"Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang."

Ah, well! Time enough to face things when they came. She would only
think of seeing him! And she put the letter back to burn what hole it
liked in the pocket of her fur coat.

The train was late; it was past five, already growing dark, when she
reached Paddington and took a cab to the Temple. Strange to be going
there for the first time--not even to know exactly where Harcourt
Buildings were. At Temple Lane, she stopped the cab and walked down that
narrow, ill-lighted, busy channel into the heart of the Great Law.

"Up those stone steps, miss; along the railin', second doorway." Gyp came
to the second doorway and in the doubtful light scrutinized the names.
"Summerhay--second floor." She began to climb the stairs. Her heart
beat fast. What would he say? How greet her? Was it not absurd,
dangerous, to have come? He would be