Edwin took a long breath. He had seen her! Yes, but the interview had
been worse than his worst expectations. He had surpassed himself in
futility, in fatuous lack of enterprise. He had behaved liked a
schoolboy. Now, as he plunged up the street with the wind, he could
devise easily a dozen ways of animating and guiding and controlling the
interview so that, even if sad, its sadness might have been agreeable.
The interview had been hell, ineffable torture, a perfect crime of
clumsiness. It had resulted in nothing. (Except, of course, that he
had seen her--that fact was indisputable.) He blamed himself. He
cursed himself with really extraordinary savageness.
"Why did I go near her?" he demanded. "Why couldn't I keep away? I've
simply made myself look a blasted fool! Creeping and crawling round
her! ... After all, she _did_ throw me over! And now she asks me to take
a parcel to her confounded kid! The whole thing's ridiculous! And
what's going to happen to her in that hole? I don't suppose she's got
the least notion of looking after herself. Impossible--the whole thing!
If anybody had told me that I should--that she'd--" Half of which talk
was simple bluster. The parcel was bobbing on its loop against his
side.
When he reached the top of the street he discovered that he had been
going up it instead of down it. "What am I thinking of?" he grumbled
impatiently. However, he would not turn back. He adventured forward,
climbing into latitudes whose geography was strange to him, and scarcely
seeing a single fellow-wanderer beneath the gas-lamps. Presently, after
a steep hill, he came to a churchyard, and then he redescended, and at
last tumbled into a street alive with people who had emerged from a
theatre, laughing, lighting cigarettes, linking arms. Their existence
seemed shallow, purposeless, infantile, compared to his. He felt
himself superior to them. What did they know about life? He would not
change with any of them.
Recognising the label on an omnibus, he followed its direction, and
arrived almost immediately in the vast square which contained his hotel,
and which was illuminated by the brilliant facades of several hotels.
The doors of the Royal Sussex were locked, because eleven o'clock had
struck. He could not account for the period of nearly three hours which
had passed since he left the hotel. The zealous porter, observing his
shadow through the bars, had sprung to unfasten the door before he could
ring.
------------------------------------------------------------------------