ardens, to lose itself in the black slums of
Bloomsbury. On the pavement the reeling girl was swept on with the crowd,
still singing her hideous song. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was leaning back now,
with her eyes closed, not heeding the ugly pageant. But the scene came
back to her in nightmares afterwards.

As Stanistreet's hansom turned after leaving her at Ridgmount Gardens, he
thought he saw some one remarkably like Tyson standing in the shadow of
the railings opposite her door. He must have seen them; and but for the
delay they would probably have overtaken and so missed him.

And Stanistreet kept on saying to himself: No. Women do not love like
that. And yet the bare idea of it turned Stanistreet, the cool, the
collected, into a trembling maniac. He could not face the possibility of
losing her, of being nothing to her. But for that he might have been
content to go on drifting indefinitely, sure of a sort of visionary
eternity, taking no count of time. He had been happy in his doubt. Once
it had tormented him; he had struggled against it; later, it had become
a source of endless interest, like a man's amusing dialogues with his own
soul; now, it was the one solitary refuge of his hope. He clung to it, he
could not let it go. He staked his all on the folly, the frailty of
Mrs. Nevill Tyson.

He had yet to prove it.

Of course she was a little fool; that went without saying. He had known
many women who were fools, and he had survived their folly. But it seemed
that he could not live without this particular little fool.

He called the next day at Ridgmount Gardens.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson's manner was a little disconcerting. He found her at
the piano, singing in her pathetic mezzo-soprano a song that used to he
a favorite of Tyson's. The selection was another freak; it was the first
time Louis had heard her sing that song since they left Thorneytoft.

This is what she sang; but Louis only came in for the last two verses.

"Oh feet that would be roving,
I will not bid you stay,
Though my heart should break with loving,
When love is far away.

(_Dim_.) "Oh heart that would be sleeping,
I will not wake you. No,
You shall hear no sound of weeping,
No footsteps come and go.

"Then come not for my calling,
Roam on the livelong day;
Some time when night is falling,
Love will steal