sort, and he only fidgeted and floundered in his want of power. The
chapter wasn't in the least closed, not for the other party; and the
other party had a pull, somehow and somewhere: this his whole attitude
and expression confessed, at the same time that they entreated her not to
remember and not to mind. So long as she did remember and did mind he
could only circle about and go and come, doing futile things of which he
was ashamed. He was ashamed of his two words to Dr. Buzzard; he went out
of the shop as soon as he had crumpled up the paper again and thrust it
into his pocket. It had been an abject little exposure of dreadful
impossible passion. He appeared in fact to be too ashamed to come back.
He had once more left town, and a first week elapsed, and a second. He
had had naturally to return to the real mistress of his fate; she had
insisted--she knew how to insist, and he couldn't put in another hour.
There was always a day when she called time. It was known to our young
friend moreover that he had now been dispatching telegrams from other
offices. She knew at last so much that she had quite lost her earlier
sense of merely guessing. There were no different shades of
distinctness--it all bounced out.




CHAPTER XXII


Eighteen days elapsed, and she had begun to think it probable she should
never see him again. He too then understood now: he had made out that
she had secrets and reasons and impediments, that even a poor girl at the
P.O. might have her complications. With the charm she had cast on him
lightened by distance he had suffered a final delicacy to speak to him,