d poverty and proximity, and
everything was young and kindly. I shouldn't wonder if she could laugh
about it with me now. I shouldn't wonder-- But they've probably spoiled
her, so that she'd be tiresome if one met her again."

Bartley smiled and yawned and went to bed.

CHAPTER III

The next evening Alexander dined alone at a club, and at about nine
o'clock he dropped in at the Duke of York's. The house was sold out
and he stood through the second act. When he returned to his hotel he
examined the new directory, and found Miss Burgoyne's address still
given as off Bedford Square, though at a new number. He remembered that,
in so far as she had been brought up at all, she had been brought up in
Bloomsbury. Her father and mother played in the provinces most of the
year, and she was left a great deal in the care of an old aunt who was
crippled by rheumatism and who had had to leave the stage altogether. In
the days when Alexander knew her, Hilda always managed to have a lodging
of some sort about Bedford Square, because she clung tenaciously to such
scraps and shreds of memories as were connected with it. The mummy
room of the British Museum had been one of the chief delights of her
childhood. That forbidding pile was the goal of her truant fancy, and
she was sometimes taken there for a treat, as other children are taken
to the theatre. It was long since Alexander had thought of any of
these things, but now they came back to him quite fresh, and had a
significance they did not have when they were first told him in his
restless twenties. So she was still in the old neighborhood, near
Bedford Square. The new number probably meant increased prosperity. He
hoped so. He would like to know that she was snugly settled. He looked
at his watch. It was a quarter past ten; she would not be home for a
good two hours yet, and he might as well walk over and have a look at
the place. He remembered the shortest way.

It was a warm, smoky evening, and there was a grimy moon. He went
through Covent Garden to Oxford Street, and as he turned into Museum
Street he walked more slowly, smiling at his own nervousness as he
approached the sullen gray mass at the end. He had not been inside the
Museum, actually, since he and Hilda used to meet there; sometimes
to set out for gay adventures at Twickenham or Richmond, sometimes to
linger about the place for a while and to ponder by Lord Elgin's marbles
upon the lastingness of some things, o