would have been a row, but to-day he was caught away so absolutely into
his own world that any one could speak to him, any one laugh at him, any
one insult him, and he would not care. He had been meditating for weeks
the advance that he had just taken; always when one meditates for long
over a risk it swells into gigantic proportions. So this had been; that
simple sentence asking her to come out and talk to him had seemed an
impossible challenge to every kind of fate, and now, in a moment, the gulf
had been jumped...so easy, so strangely easy....

From a great distance Davray's words came to him, and in the dialogue that
followed he spoke like a somnambulist.

"Yes," he said, "my name's Brandon."

"I knew, of course," said Davray. "I've seen you about." He spoke with
great swiftness, the words tumbling over one another, not with eagerness,
but rather with a kind of supercilious carelessness. "Beastly hole, isn't
this? Wonder why one comes here. Must do something in this rotten town.
I've drunk enough of this filthy beer. What do you say to moving out?"

Falk looked up at him.

"What do you say?" he asked.

"Let's move out of this. If you're walking up the town I'll go with you."

Falk was not conscious of the man, but it was quite true that he wanted to
get out of the place now that his job in it was done. He got up without a
word and began to push through the room. He was met near the door by Hogg.