mechanically
'cleaning up'. He wanted to know what had happened; somehow he must find
out. He could never approach herself, he knew; he would never bring back
to her the shame of that last encounter with him; it was scarcely likely
that he would even set eyes on her. But he must get to know!... Cupples
was in London, Marlowe was there.... And, anyhow, he was sick of Paris.

Such thoughts came and went; and below them all strained the fibres of
an unseen cord that dragged mercilessly at his heart, and that he cursed
bitterly in the moments when he could not deny to himself that it was
there. The folly, the useless, pitiable folly of it!

In twenty-four hours his feeble roots in Paris had been torn out. He
was looking over a leaden sea at the shining fortress-wall of the Dover
cliffs.

But though he had instinctively picked out the lines of a set purpose
from among the welter of promptings in his mind, he found it delayed at
the very outset.

He had decided that he must first see Mr Cupples, who would be in a
position to tell him much more than the American knew. But Mr Cupples
was away on his travels, not expected to return for a month; and Trent
had no reasonable excuse for hastening his return. Marlowe he would not
confront until he had tried at least to reconnoitre the position. He
constrained himself not to commit the crowning folly of seeking out Mrs
Manderson's house in Hampstead; he could not enter it, and the thought
of the possibility of being seen by her lurking in its neighbourhood
brought the blood to his face.

He stayed at an hotel, took a studio, and while he awaited Mr Cupples's
return attempted vainly to lose himself in work.

At the end of a week he had an idea that he acted upon with eager
precipitancy. She had let fall some word at their last meeting, of a
taste for music. Trent went that evening, and thenceforward regularly,
to the opera. He might see her; and if, in spite of his caution,
she caught sight of him, they could be blind to each other's
presence--anybody might happen to go to the opera.

So he went alone each evening, passing as quickly as he might through
the people in the vestibule; and each evening he came away knowing that
she had not been in the house. It was a habit that yielded him a sort of
satisfaction along with the guilty excitement of his search; for he too
loved music, and nothing gave him so much peace while its magic endured.

One night as he entered, hurrying thr