d to the contrary. Hilda stood mute and constrained.

"You run down and tell them to make tea at once, dear. I can't let you
go without anything at all. I wonder what can have kept Osmond."

Almost at the same moment, Osmond Orgreave entered the bedroom. His
arrival had been unnoticed amid the tremendous resounding of the duet.

"Oh, Osmond," said his wife. "Wherever have you been so late? Hilda
wants to go--Edwin Clayhanger has invited her to go over the works."

Hilda, trembling at the door, more than half expected Mr. Orgreave to
say: "You mean, she's invited herself." But Osmond received the
information with exactly the same polite, apologetic seriousness as his
wife, and, reassured, Hilda departed from the room.

Ten minutes later, veiled and cloaked, she stepped out alone into the
garden. And instantly her torment was assuaged, and she was happy. She
waited at the corner of the street for the steam-car. But, when the car
came thundering down, it was crammed to the step; with a melancholy
gesture, the driver declined her signal. She set off down Trafalgar Road
in the mist and the rain, glad that she had been compelled to walk. It
seemed to her that she was on a secret and mystic errand. This was not
surprising. The remarkable thing was that all the hurrying people she
met seemed also each of them to be on a secret and mystic errand. The
shining wet pavement was dotted with dark figures, suggestive and
enigmatic, who glided over a floor that was pierced by perpendicular
reflections.

III

In the Clayhanger shop, agitated and scarcely aware of what she did, she
could, nevertheless, hear her voice greeting Edwin Clayhanger in firm,
calm tones; and she soon perceived very clearly that he was even more
acutely nervous than herself: which perception helped to restore her
confidence, while, at the same time, it filled her with bliss. The
young, fair man, with his awkward and constrained movements, took
possession of her umbrella, and then suggested that she should remove
her mackintosh. She obeyed, timid and glad. She stripped off her
mackintosh, as though she were stripping off her modesty, and stood
before him revealed. To complete the sacrifice, she raised her veil, and
smiled up at him, as it were, asking: "What next?" Then a fat, untidy
old man appeared in the doorway of a cubicle within the shop, and Edwin
Clayhanger blushed.

"Father, this is Miss Lessways. Miss Lessways, my father....
She's--she's come