Chapter 15 - Page 2

that verged on gulfs of doubt. Had she ever "helped"? She
had not, she declared. Then she added that twice at home she had "sat
down" to complete the circle. She would never help again. That she
promised--if it needed promising. There had already been dreadful
trouble at home about the exposure at Lagune's. Her mother had sided
with her stepfather and joined in blaming her. But was she to blame?

"Of _course_ you were not to blame," said Lewisham. Lagune, he
learnt, had been unhappy and restless for the three days after the
_séance_--indulging in wearisome monologue--with Ethel as sole auditor
(at twenty-one shillings a week). Then he had decided to give Chaffery
a sound lecture on his disastrous dishonesty. But it was Chaffery
gave the lecture. Smithers, had he only known it, had been overthrown
by a better brain than Lagune's, albeit it spoke through Lagune's
treble.

Ethel did not like talking of Chaffery and these other things. "If you
knew how sweet it was to forget it all," she would say; "to be just us
two together for a little while." And, "What good _does_ it do to keep
on?" when Lewisham was pressing. Lewisham wanted very much to keep on
at times, but the good of it was a little hard to demonstrate. So his
knowledge of the situation remained imperfect and the weeks drifted
by.

Wonderfully varied were those seven-and-sixty nights, as he came to
remember in after life. There were nights of damp and drizzle, and
then thick fogs, beautiful, isolating, grey-white veils, turning every
yard of pavement into a private room. Grand indeed were these fogs,
things to rejoice at mightily, since then it was no longer a thing for
public scorn when two young people hurried along arm in arm, and one
could do a thousand impudent, significant things with varying pressure
and the fondling of a little hand (a hand in a greatly mended glove of
cheap kid). Then indeed one seemed to be nearer that elusive something
that threaded it all together. And the dangers of the street corners,
the horses looming up suddenly out of the dark, the carters with
lanterns at their horses' heads, the street lamps, blurred, smoky
orange at one's nearest, and vanishing at twenty yards into dim haze,
seemed to accentuate the infinite need of protection on the part of a
delicate young lady who had already traversed three winters of fogs,
thornily alone. Moreover, one could come right down the quiet street
where she lived, halfway to the steps of her house, with a delightful
sense of enterprise.

The fogs passed all too soon into a hard frost, into nights of
starlight and presently moonlight, when the lamps looked hard,
flashing like rows of yellow gems, and