hop for selling maps which she remembered in Great Queen Street,
since she hardly liked to be set down at his door. Arrived at the shop,
she bought a large scale map of Norfolk, and thus provided, hurried into
Lincoln's Inn Fields, and assured herself of the position of Messrs.
Hoper and Grateley's office. The great gas chandeliers were alight in
the office windows. She conceived that he sat at an enormous table laden
with papers beneath one of them in the front room with the three tall
windows. Having settled his position there, she began walking to and fro
upon the pavement. Nobody of his build appeared. She scrutinized each
male figure as it approached and passed her. Each male figure had,
nevertheless, a look of him, due, perhaps, to the professional dress,
the quick step, the keen glance which they cast upon her as they
hastened home after the day's work. The square itself, with its immense
houses all so fully occupied and stern of aspect, its atmosphere of
industry and power, as if even the sparrows and the children were
earning their daily bread, as if the sky itself, with its gray and
scarlet clouds, reflected the serious intention of the city beneath it,
spoke of him. Here was the fit place for their meeting, she thought;
here was the fit place for her to walk thinking of him. She could
not help comparing it with the domestic streets of Chelsea. With this
comparison in her mind, she extended her range a little, and turned into
the main road. The great torrent of vans and carts was sweeping
down Kingsway; pedestrians were streaming in two currents along the
pavements. She stood fascinated at the corner. The deep roar filled her
ears; the changing tumult had the inexpressible fascination of varied
life pouring ceaselessly with a purpose which, as she looked, seemed to
her, somehow, the normal purpose for which life was framed; its complete
indifference to the individuals, whom it swallowed up and rolled
onwards, filled her with at least a temporary exaltation. The blend of
daylight and of lamplight made her an invisible spectator, just as it
gave the people who passed her a semi-transparent quality, and left the
faces pale ivory ovals in which the eyes alone were dark. They tended
the enormous rush of the current--the great flow, the deep stream, the
unquenchable tide. She stood unobserved and absorbed, glorying openly
in the rapture that had run subterraneously all day. Suddenly she
was clutched, unwilling, from t