it.

I did not think she was, and I had a lurid moment when I was tempted
to push on and make her show herself somehow at her worst. We had
undertaken a preposterous thing in befriending her as we had done,
and our course in bringing Kendricks in was wholly unjustifiable.
How could I lead her on to some betrayal of her essential
Philistinism, and make her so impossible in his eyes that even he,
with all his sweetness and goodness, must take the first train from
Saratoga in the morning?

We had of course joined the crowd in pushing forward; people always
do, though they promise themselves to wait till the last one is out.
I got caught in a dark eddy on the first stair-landing; but I could
see them farther down, and I knew they would wait for me outside the
door.

When I reached it at last they were nowhere to be seen; I looked up
this street and down that, but they were not in sight.



CHAPTER XII



I did not afflict myself very much, nor pretend to do so. They knew
the way home, and after I had blundered about in search of them
through the lampshot darkness, I settled myself to walk back at my
leisure, comfortably sure that I should find them on the verandah