the old manner. Those words which
Smith had let fall concerning somebody having a prior claim to Elfride,
would, if uttered when the man was younger, have provoked such a query
as, 'Come, tell me all about it, my lad,' from Knight, and Stephen would
straightway have delivered himself of all he knew on the subject.

Stephen the ingenuous boy, though now obliterated externally by Stephen
the contriving man, returned to Knight's memory vividly that afternoon.
He was at present but a sojourner in London; and after attending to the
two or three matters of business which remained to be done that day, he
walked abstractedly into the gloomy corridors of the British Museum for
the half-hour previous to their closing. That meeting with Smith had
reunited the present with the past, closing up the chasm of his absence
from England as if it had never existed, until the final circumstances
of his previous time of residence in London formed but a yesterday
to the circumstances now. The conflict that then had raged in him
concerning Elfride Swancourt revived, strengthened by its sleep. Indeed,
in those many months of absence, though quelling the intention to make
her his wife, he had never forgotten that she was the type of woman
adapted to his nature; and instead of trying to obliterate thoughts
of her altogether, he had grown to regard them as an infirmity it was
necessary to tolerate.

Knight returned to his hotel much earlier in the evening than he would
have done in the ordinary course of things. He did not care to think
whether this arose from a friendly wish to close the gap that had slowly
been widening between himself and his earliest acquaintance, or from
a hankering desire to hear the meaning of the dark oracles Stephen had
hastily pronounced, betokening that he knew something more of Elfride
than Knight had supposed.

He made a hasty dinner, inquired for Smith, and soon was ushered
into the young man's presence, whom he found sitting in front of
a comfortable fire, beside a table spread with a few scientific
periodicals and art reviews.

'I have come to you, after all,' said Knight. 'My manner was odd this
morning, and it seemed desirable to call; but that you had too much
sense to notice, Stephen, I know. Put it down to my wanderings in France
and Italy.'

'Don't say another word, but sit down. I am only too glad to see you
again.'

Stephen would hardly have cared to tell Knight just then that the minute
before Kn