y parted with an agreement not to meet again in the morning.
After his door had been some time closed he heard her softly gliding
into her chamber.

Chapter XI

'Journeys end in lovers meeting.'

Stephen lay watching the Great Bear; Elfride was regarding a monotonous
parallelogram of window blind. Neither slept that night.

Early the next morning--that is to say, four hours after their
stolen interview, and just as the earliest servant was heard moving
about--Stephen Smith went downstairs, portmanteau in hand. Throughout
the night he had intended to see Mr. Swancourt again, but the sharp
rebuff of the previous evening rendered such an interview particularly
distasteful. Perhaps there was another and less honest reason. He
decided to put it off. Whatever of moral timidity or obliquity may have
lain in such a decision, no perception of it was strong enough to detain
him. He wrote a note in his room, which stated simply that he did not
feel happy in the house after Mr. Swancourt's sudden veto on what he had
favoured a few hours before; but that he hoped a time would come, and
that soon, when his original feelings of pleasure as Mr. Swancourt's
guest might be recovered.

He expected to find the downstairs rooms wearing the gray and cheerless
aspect that early morning gives to everything out of the sun. He
found in the dining room a breakfast laid, of which somebody had just
partaken.

Stephen gave the maid-servant his note of adieu. She stated that Mr.
Swancourt had risen early that morning, and made an early breakfast. He
was not going away that she knew of.

Stephen took a cup of coffee, left the house of his love, and turned
into the lane. It was so early that the shaded places still smelt like
night time, and the sunny spots had hardly felt the sun. The horizontal
rays made every shallow dip in the ground to show as a well-marked
hollow. Even the channel of the path was enough to throw shade, and the
very stones of the road cast tapering dashes of darkness westward, as
long as Jael's tent-nail.

At a spot not more than a hundred yards from the vicar's residence the
lane leading thence crossed the high road. Stephen reached the point of
intersection, stood still and listened. Nothing could be heard save the
lengthy, murmuring line of the sea upon the adjacent shore. He looked
at his watch, and then mounted a gate upon which he seated himself, to
await the arrival of the carrier. Whilst he sat he he