hes the turning into Queen Anne Street
there seems to rise round him the atmosphere of what Londoners call the
City--the City as it is at night, uncannily deserted save for the
ghosts and lovers who haunt its solitary thoroughfares after the bustle
of the day is stilled. It was then that he and Nan first learnt to
wander there. From there he travels on into golden sunlight; he is again
in Richmond Park as it was during the whole of that beautiful October.

Walking up the west side of Cavendish Square, Coxeter again becomes
absorbed in his great adventure,--a far greater adventure than that with
which his friends and acquaintances still associate his name. With some
surprise, even perhaps with some discomfiture, he sees himself--for he
has not wholly cast out the old Adam--he sees himself as he was that
memorable morning, carried, that is, wholly out of his usual wise,
ponderate self. Perhaps he even wonders a little how he could ever have
found courage to do what he did--he who has always thought so much, in a
hidden way, of the world's opinion and of what people will say.

He could still tell you which lamp-post he was striding past when he
realized, with a thrill of relief, that in any case Nan Archdale would
not treat him as would almost certainly do one of those women whom he
had honoured with his cold approval something less than a week ago. Any
one of those women would have regarded what he was now going to ask Nan
to do as an outrage on the conventions of life. But Nan Archdale would
be guided only by what she herself thought right and seemly....

And then, as he turns again into Wimpole Street, as he comes near to
what was once his wife's house, his long steady stride becomes slower.
Unwillingly he is living again those doubtful moments when he knocked at
her door, when he gave the surprised maid the confused explanation that
he had a message from the doctor for Mrs. Archdale. He hears the young
woman say, "Mrs. Archdale is just going out, sir. The doctor thought she
ought to take a walk;" and his muttered answer, "I won't keep her a
moment...."

Again he feels the exultant, breathless thrill which seized him when she
slipped, neither of them exactly knew how, into his arms, and when the
sentences he had prepared, the arguments he meant to use, in his hurried
rush up the long street, were all forgotten. He hears himself imploring
her to come away with him now, at once. Is she not dressed to go out?
Instinct t