h a maze of diamond-glittering spiders' webs
to say good-bye and escape, for at each movement Mrs. Hilbery remembered
something further about the villainies of picture-framers or the
delights of poetry, and at one time it seemed to the young man that he
would be hypnotized into doing what she pretended to want him to do,
for he could not suppose that she attached any value whatever to his
presence. Katharine, however, made an opportunity for him to leave, and
for that he was grateful to her, as one young person is grateful for the
understanding of another.

CHAPTER II

The young man shut the door with a sharper slam than any visitor had
used that afternoon, and walked up the street at a great pace, cutting
the air with his walking-stick. He was glad to find himself outside that
drawing-room, breathing raw fog, and in contact with unpolished people
who only wanted their share of the pavement allowed them. He thought
that if he had had Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Hilbery out here he would have
made them, somehow, feel his superiority, for he was chafed by the
memory of halting awkward sentences which had failed to give even the
young woman with the sad, but inwardly ironical eyes a hint of his
force. He tried to recall the actual words of his little outburst,
and unconsciously supplemented them by so many words of greater
expressiveness that the irritation of his failure was somewhat assuaged.
Sudden stabs of the unmitigated truth assailed him now and then, for he
was not inclined by nature to take a rosy view of his conduct, but
what with the beat of his foot upon the pavement, and the glimpse
which half-drawn curtains offered him of kitchens, dining-rooms, and
drawing-rooms, illustrating with mute power different scenes from
different lives, his own experience lost its sharpness.

His own experience underwent a curious change. His speed slackened, his
head sank a little towards his breast, and the lamplight shone now and
again upon a face grown strangely tranquil. His thought was so absorbing
that when it became necessary to verify the name of a street, he looked
at it for a time before he read it; when he came to a crossing, he
seemed to have to reassure himself by two or three taps, such as a blind
man gives, upon the curb; and, reaching the Underground station, he
blinked in the bright circle of light, glanced at his watch, decided
that he might still indulge himself in darkness, and walked straight on.

And yet the