"Yes. No. 29."

"Perhaps you'll let me call on you," he ventured.

"Oh, do!" she encouraged him.

Nothing could have been more correct, and nothing more banal, than this
part of their conversation. He certainly would call. He would travel
down to the idyllic Putney to-morrow. He could not lose such a friend,
such a balm, such a soft cushion, such a comprehending intelligence. He
would bit by bit become intimate with her, and perhaps ultimately he
might arrive at the stage of being able to tell her who he was with some
chance of being believed. Anyhow, when he did call--and he insisted to
himself that it should be extremely soon--he would try another plan with
her; he would carefully decide beforehand just what to say and how to
say it. This decision reconciled him somewhat to a temporary parting
from her.

So he paid the bill, under her sagacious, protesting eyes, and he
managed to conceal from those eyes the precise amount of the tip; and
then, at the cloak-room, he furtively gave sixpence to a fat and wealthy
man who had been watching over his hat and stick. (Highly curious, how
those common-sense orbs of hers made all such operations seem
excessively silly!) And at last they wandered, in silence, through the
corridors and antechambers that led to the courtyard entrance. And
through the glass portals Priam Farll had a momentary glimpse of the
reflection of light on a cabman's wet macintosh. It was raining. It was
raining very heavily indeed. All was dry under the glass-roofed
colonnades of the courtyard, but the rain rattled like kettledrums on