she met with no opposition; Katharine
seemed indifferent to her presence. In a few minutes they were walking
along the Strand. They walked so rapidly that Mary was deluded into
the belief that Katharine knew where she was going. She herself was not
attentive. She was glad of the movement along lamp-lit streets in the
open air. She was fingering, painfully and with fear, yet with strange
hope, too, the discovery which she had stumbled upon unexpectedly that
night. She was free once more at the cost of a gift, the best, perhaps,
that she could offer, but she was, thank Heaven, in love no longer.
She was tempted to spend the first instalment of her freedom in some
dissipation; in the pit of the Coliseum, for example, since they were
now passing the door. Why not go in and celebrate her independence of
the tyranny of love? Or, perhaps, the top of an omnibus bound for some
remote place such as Camberwell, or Sidcup, or the Welsh Harp would suit
her better. She noticed these names painted on little boards for the
first time for weeks. Or should she return to her room, and spend
the night working out the details of a very enlightened and ingenious
scheme? Of all possibilities this appealed to her most, and brought to
mind the fire, the lamplight, the steady glow which had seemed lit in
the place where a more passionate flame had once burnt.

Now Katharine stopped, and Mary woke to the fact that instead of having
a goal she had evidently none. She paused at the edge of the crossing,
and looked this way and that, and finally made as if in the direction of
Haverstock Hill.

"Look here--where are you going?" Mary cried, catching her by the hand.
"We must take that cab and go home." She hailed a cab and insisted that
Katharine should get in, while she directed the driver to take them to
Cheyne Walk.

Katharine submitted. "Very well," she said. "We may as well go there as
anywhere else."

A gloom seemed to have fallen on her. She lay back in her corner, silent
and apparently exhausted. Mary, in spite of her own preoccupation, was
struck by her pallor and her attitude of dejection.

"I'm sure we shall find him," she said more gently than she had yet
spoken.

"It may be too late," Katharine replied. Without understanding her, Mary
began to pity her for what she was suffering.

"Nonsense," she said, taking her hand and rubbing it. "If we don't find
him there we shall find him somewhere else."

"But suppose he's walking about