They met on the morrow, a hot August day, with the heat quivering up
from the pavements and the walls of the houses.... Rodd was the first
to arrive at the book-shop where they had arranged to meet. The
bookseller chaffed him about the 'young leddy,' because Rodd had never
been known to speak to any one--male or female, in the shop.
'That's a fine young leddy,' said the bookseller. 'She knows that to
do good to others is to do good to yourself. And mind ye, that's a
fact. It's not preaching. It's hard scientific fact.'
'Who is she?' asked Rodd.
'She's an actress-girl, and she is friendly with lords. How she came
to find a poor shop like mine I cannot tell ye. But in she walked, and
my luck turned from that day.'
Clara came in. She stood on the threshold of the shop and turned over
the papers that stood there on a table. She had seen Rodd, but wished
to gain a moment or two before she spoke to him, so great had been the
shock of meeting him. Since leaving him the day before she had done
nothing at all but wait for the time to come for her to see him again,
but when the time came she had to force her way out of the brooding
concentration upon him which absorbed all her energies. She dreaded
the meeting. In recollection, his personality had been clearer and
more precise to her than in his actual presence, when the force of his
ideas obscured everything else. He was unhappy, he was poor, he was
solitary, and it angered her that such a man should be any one of these
things. He seemed so forceful and yet to be poor, to be unhappy, to be
solitary in a world where, as she had proved, wealth and companionship
were so easy of access, argued some weakness.... He waited for her to
move, and that angered her. He stood still and waited for her to move.
So fierce was the gust of anger in her that she nearly walked out of
the shop then and there, but she saw his eyes intent upon her and she
went up to him, holding out her hand. He gripped it tightly and said,--
'I was afraid you might not come.'
'Why should I not?'
'I have so little to give you.'
'You gave me a good deal yesterday.'
'Everything.'
The bookseller looked up at the bust of William Morris on his poetry
shelves and winked. Then he tip-toed away.
Clara forgave him for not moving to meet her. His directness of speech
satisfied her as to his strength and honesty.
Neither was disposed to waste time. Their intimacy had begun at their
first meeting.
'It is too hot in London,' he said. 'Shall we walk out to Highgate or
Hampstead?'
Clara wanted to touch him, to make certain that he was really a man and
not a mere perambulating mind, and she laid her hand on his arm. It
was painfully thin, and she knew instinctively that he was not properly
cared for, and then again she was full of mistrust. Was it only her
sympathy that involved her life with his? ... The shock of it had made
it perfectly clear that in Charles, as a man, she had never had the
smallest interest. That had been disastrous, and she shrank from
creating more trouble by her impetuosity. To hurt this man would be
serious. No one could hurt Charles except himself; and even then he
would always wake up in the morning singing and whistling like a happy
boy or a blackbird in a cherry-tree in blossom.
They went by tube to Highgate, making no attempt to talk through the
clatter and roar of the train in the tunnel.