ed his head. The flat was on the sixth story. The slope of
central London lay beneath. There was no moon, but there were stars in a
clear night. Roofs; lighted windows; lines of lighted traffic; lines of
lamps patterning the invisible meadows of a park; hiatuses of blackness;
beyond, several towers scarcely discernible against the sky--the towers
of Parliament, and the high tower of the Roman Catholic Cathedral: these
were London.

"You haven't seen it in daytime, have you?" said Lois.

"No. I'd sooner see it at night."

"So would I."

The reply, the sympathy in it, the soft, thrilled tone of It, startled
him. His curiosity about Lois was being justified, after all. And he was
startled too at the extraordinary surprises of his own being. Yesterday
he had parted from Marguerite; not ten years ago, but yesterday. And now
already he was conscious of pleasure, both physical and spiritual, in
the voice of another girl heard in the withdrawn obscurity of the
embrasure. Yes, and a girl whom he had despised! Yesterday he had
seriously believed himself to be a celibate for life; he had dismissed
for ever the hope of happiness. He had seen naught but a dogged and
eternal infelicity. And now he was, if not finding happiness, expecting
it. He felt disloyal--less precisely to Marguerite than to a vanished
ideal. He felt that he ought to be ashamed. For Marguerite still
existed; she was existing at that moment less than three miles
off--somewhere over there in the dark.

"See the Cathedral tower?" he said.

"Yes," she answered. "What a shame Bentley died, wasn't it?"

He was more than startled, now--he was amazed and enchanted. Something
touching and strange in her voice usually hard; something in the elegant
fragility of her slipper! Everybody knew that Bentley was the architect
of the Cathedral and that he had died of cancer on the tongue. The
knowledge was not esoteric; it did not by itself indicate a passion for
architecture or a comprehension of architecture. Yet when she said the
exclamatory words, leaning far back in the seat, her throat emerging
from the sequined frock, her tapping slipper peeping out beneath the
skirt, she cast a spell on him. He perceived in her a woman gifted and
endowed. This was the girl whom he had bullied in the automobile. She
must have bowed in secret to his bullying; though he knew she had been
hurt by it, she had given no sign of resentment, and her voice was
acquiescent. Above all, she had