Chapter 13 - Page 2

cheated you, someone else would," was Ethel's inadequate
muttered retort, unheard by the seeker after phenomena.

It was perhaps not so bad as dismissal, but it certainly lasted
longer. And at home was Chaffery, grimly malignant at her failure to
secure that pneumatic glove. He had no right to blame her, he really
had not; but a disturbed temper is apt to falsify the scales of
justice. The tambourine, he insisted, he could have explained by
saying he put up his hand to catch it and protect his head directly
Smithers moved. But the pneumatic glove there was no explaining. He
had made a chance for her to secure it when he had pretended to
faint. It was rubbish to say anyone could have been looking on the
table then--rubbish.

Beside that significant wreck of a pen stood a little carriage clock
in a case, and this suddenly lifted a slender voice and announced
_five_. She turned round on her stool and sat staring at the
clock. She smiled with the corners of her mouth down. "Home," she
said, "and begin again. It's like battledore and shuttlecock....

"I _was_ silly....

"I suppose I've brought it on myself. I ought to have picked it up, I
suppose. I had time....

"Cheats ... just cheats.

"I never thought I should see him again....

"He was ashamed, of course.... He had his own friends."

For a space she sat still, staring blankly before her. She sighed,
rubbed a knuckle in a reddened eye, rose.

She went into the hall, where her hat, transfixed by a couple of
hat-pins, hung above her jacket, assumed these garments, and let
herself out into the cold grey street.

She had hardly gone twenty yards from Lagune's door before she became
aware of a man overtaking her and walking beside her. That kind of
thing is a common enough experience to girls who go to and from work
in London, and she had had perforce to learn many things since her
adventurous Whortley days. She looked stiffly in front of her. The man
deliberately got in her way so that she had to stop. She lifted eyes
of indignant protest. It was Lewisham--and his face was white.

He hesitated awkwardly, and then in silence held out his hand. She
took it mechanically. He found his voice. "Miss Henderson," he said.

"What do you want?" she asked faintly.

"I don't know," he said.... "I want to talk to you."

"Yes?" Her heart was beating fast.

He found the thing unexpectedly difficult.

"May I--? Are you expecting--? Have you far to go? I would like to
talk to you. There is a lot ..."

"I walk to Clapham," she said. "If you care ... to come part of the