rself had ceased for ever to be the close
relations they had been up to a few weeks ago. It was impossible now to
tell him the tale of her wild elopement with Stephen Smith.

He was still snugly housed in her heart. His absence had regained for
him much of that aureola of saintship which had been nearly abstracted
during her reproachful mood on that miserable journey from London.
Rapture is often cooled by contact with its cause, especially if under
awkward conditions. And that last experience with Stephen had done
anything but make him shine in her eyes. His very kindness in letting
her return was his offence. Elfride had her sex's love of sheer force
in a man, however ill-directed; and at that critical juncture in London
Stephen's only chance of retaining the ascendancy over her that his face
and not his parts had acquired for him, would have been by doing what,
for one thing, he was too youthful to undertake--that was, dragging her
by the wrist to the rails of some altar, and peremptorily marrying
her. Decisive action is seen by appreciative minds to be frequently
objectless, and sometimes fatal; but decision, however suicidal, has
more charm for a woman than the most unequivocal Fabian success.

However, some of the unpleasant accessories of that occasion were now
out of sight again, and Stephen had resumed not a few of his fancy
colours.

Chapter XIII

'He set in order many proverbs.'

It is London in October--two months further on in the story.

Bede's Inn has this peculiarity, that it faces, receives from, and
discharges into a bustling thoroughfare speaking only of wealth
and respectability, whilst its postern abuts on as crowded and
poverty-stricken a network of alleys as are to be found anywhere in the
metropolis. The moral consequences are, first, that those who occupy
chambers in the Inn may see a great deal of shirtless humanity's habits
and enjoyments without doing more than look down from a back window;
and second they may hear wholesome though unpleasant social reminders
through the medium of a harsh voice, an unequal footstep, the echo of
a blow or a fall, which originates in the person of some drunkard or
wife-beater, as he crosses and interferes with the quiet of the square.
Characters of this kind frequently pass through the Inn from a little
foxhole of an alley at the back, but they never loiter there.

It is hardly necessary to state that all the sights and movements proper
to