ponsibilities. She passed them on to him and from her he
had won the strength to carry all things.

She was punctual to the minute, but he was late.

'They're falling over themselves about you in the papers, young leddy,'
said the bookseller.

'Are they?'

'Haven't you seen them?'

He had cut out all the notices, and to please him she made a pretence
of reading them, but they gave her a kind of nausea. The critics wrote
like lackeys fawning upon Sir Henry's success.... In Paris with her
grandfather she had once seen the _Mariage de Figaro_ acted. Sir Henry
reminded her of the Duc d'Almaviva, and she thought wittily that the
type had taken refuge in the theatre, there perhaps to die. Sir Henry
surely was the last of this line. Not even with the support of the
newspapers would the world, bamboozled and cheated as always, consent
any longer to support them.

It was a good transition this from the Imperium to the book-shop.
Books were on the whole dependable. If they deceived you it was your
own fault. There was not with them the pressure of the crowd to aid
deception.

This wholesome little man living among books, upon them, and for them,
was exactly the right person for her to see first upon this day when
she was to discard her mimic for her real triumph. This day was like a
flower that had grown up out of all her days. In its honey was
distilled all the love she had inspired in others, and all the love
that others had inspired in her.

This was the real London, here in Charing Cross Road, shabby, careless,
unambitious, unmethodical. It was here in the real London that she
wished to begin her real life. From the time of her first meeting with
him in the book-shop, her deepest imagination had never left Rodd, and
she knew all that he had been through. She had most profoundly been
aware of his struggle to break free from his captivity, exactly as she
had slowly and obstinately found her own way out. All that had been
had vanished. Only the good was left. Evil had been burned away and
for her now there was no stain upon the earth, no mist to obscure the
sun. Her soul was as clear as this September day, and she knew that
Rodd was as clear.... Of all that she had left she did not even think,
so worthless was it. A career, money, power, influence? With love,
the smile of a happy child, a sunbeam dancing into a dark room, a bunch
of hedge-row flowers are treasures of more worth than all these, joys