I have thought once or twice. Only
a little while ago I was speaking to that man Chaffery about her."

"Were you?"

"Yes. He of course would like to see any latent powers developed. But
it's a little difficult to begin, you know."

"You mean--she won't?"

"Not at present. She is a good girl, but in this matter she
is--timid. There is often a sort of disinclination--a queer sort of
feeling--one might almost call it modesty."

"I see," said Lewisham.

"One can override it usually. I don't despair."

"No," said Lewisham shortly. They were at the foot of the staircase
now. He hesitated. "You've given me a lot to think about," he said
with an attempt at an off-hand manner. "The way you talked upstairs;"
and turned towards the book he had to sign.

"I'm glad you don't take up quite such an intolerant attitude as
Mr. Smithers," said Lagune; "very glad. I must lend you a book or
two. If your _cramming_ here leaves you any time, that is."

"Thanks," said Lewisham shortly, and walked away from him. The
studiously characteristic signature quivered and sprawled in an
unfamiliar manner.

"I'm _damned_ if he overrides it," said Lewisham, under his breath.

CHAPTER XV.

LOVE IN THE STREETS.

Lewisham was not quite clear what course he meant to take in the high
enterprise of foiling Lagune, and indeed he was anything but clear
about the entire situation. His logical processes, his emotions and
his imagination seemed playing some sort of snatching game with his
will. Enormous things hung imminent, but it worked out to this,
that he walked home with Ethel night after night for--to be
exact--seven-and-sixty nights. Every week night through November and
December, save once, when he had to go into the far East to buy
himself an overcoat, he was waiting to walk with her home. A curious,
inconclusive affair, that walk, to which he came nightly full of vague
longings, and which ended invariably under an odd shadow of
disappointment. It began outside Lagune's most punctually at five, and
ended--mysteriously--at the corner of a side road in Clapham, a road
of little yellow houses with sunk basements and tawdry decorations of
stone. Up that road she vanished night after night, into a grey mist
and the shadow beyond a feeble yellow gas-lamp, and he would watch her
vanish, and then sigh and turn back towards his lodgings.

They talked of this and that, their little superficial ideas about
themselves, and of their circumst