having a consultation perhaps.
There would be a clerk or someone to beard, and what name could she give?
On the first floor she paused, took out a blank card, and pencilled on
it:

"Can I see you a minute?--G."

Then, taking a long breath to quiet her heart, she went on up. There was
the name, and there the door. She rang--no one came; listened--could
hear no sound. All looked so massive and bleak and dim--the iron
railings, stone stairs, bare walls, oak door. She rang again. What
should she do? Leave the letter? Not see him after all--her little
romance all come to naught--just a chilly visit to Bury Street, where
perhaps there would be no one but Mrs. Markey, for her father, she knew,
was at Mildenham, hunting, and would not be up till Sunday! And she
thought: 'I'll leave the letter, go back to the Strand, have some tea,
and try again.'

She took out the letter, with a sort of prayer pushed it through the slit
of the door, heard it fall into its wire cage; then slowly descended the
stairs to the outer passage into Temple Lane. It was thronged with men
and boys, at the end of the day's work. But when she had nearly reached
the Strand, a woman's figure caught her eye. She was walking with a man
on the far side; their faces were turned toward each other. Gyp heard
their voices, and, faint, dizzy, stood looking back after them. They
passed under a lamp; the light glinted on the woman's hair, on a trick of
Summerhay's, the lift of one shoulder, when he was denying something; she
heard his voice, high-pitched. She watched them cross, mount the stone
steps she had just come down, pass along the railed stone passage, enter
the doorway, disappear. And such horror seized on her that she could
hardly walk away.

"Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!" So it went in her mind--a kind of moaning, like
that of a cold, rainy wind through dripping trees. What did it mean? Oh,
what did it mean? In this miserable tumult, the only thought that did
not come to her was that of going back to his chambers. She hurried
away. It was a wonder she was not run over, for she had no notion what
she was doing, where going, and crossed the streets without the least
attention to traffic. She came to Trafalgar Square, and stood leaning
against its parapet in front of the National Gallery. Here she had her
first coherent thought: So that was why his chambers had been empty! No
clerk--no one! That they might be alone. Alone, where she