plunge into society was too great a reaction, and the very thing he
had longed for became a torture to him.

Freda was at the other end of the room talking to Keith Collins, the
well-known member for Codrington, whose curious but attractive face
was known to all the world through the caricatures of it in 'Punch.'
I knew that she saw Derrick, and that he instantly perceived her,
and that a miserable sense of separation, of distance, of
hopelessness overwhelmed him as he looked. After all, it was
natural enough. For two years he had thought of Freda night and
day; in his unutterably dreary life her memory had been his
refreshment, his solace, his companion. Now he was suddenly brought
face to face, not with the Freda of his dreams, but with a
fashionable, beautifully dressed, much-sought girl, and he felt that
a gulf lay between them; it was the gulf of experience. Freda's
life in society, the whirl of gaiety, the excitement and success
which she had been enjoying throughout the season, and his miserable
monotony of companionship with his invalid father, of hard work and
weary disappointment, had broken down the bond of union that had
once existed between them. From either side they looked at each
other--Freda with a wondering perplexity, Derrick with a dull
grinding pain at his heart.

Of course they spoke to each other; but I fancy the merest
platitudes passed between them. Somehow they had lost touch, and a
crowded London drawing-room was hardly the place to regain it.

"So your novel is really out," I heard her say to him in that deep,
clear voice of hers. "I like the design on the cover."