There was less of the same need therefore, happily, for herself; yet she only took time, before she flew to the sounder, to gasp at him:  “You’re in trouble?”

“Horrid, horrid—­there’s a row!” But they parted, on it, in the next breath; and as she dashed at the sounder, almost pushing, in her violence, the counter-clerk off the stool, she caught the bang with which, at Cocker’s door, in his further precipitation, he closed the apron of the cab into which he had leaped.  As he rebounded to some other precaution suggested by his alarm, his appeal to Miss Dolman flashed straight away.

But she had not, on the morrow, been in the place five minutes before he was with her again, still more discomposed and quite, now, as she said to herself, like a frightened child coming to its mother.  Her companions were there, and she felt it to be remarkable how, in the presence of his agitation, his mere scared exposed nature, she suddenly ceased to mind.  It came to her as it had never come to her before that with absolute directness and assurance they might carry almost anything off.  He had nothing to send—­she was sure he had been wiring all over—­and yet his business was evidently huge.  There was nothing but that in his eyes—­not a glimmer of reference or memory.  He was almost haggard with anxiety and had clearly not slept a wink.  Her pity for him would have given her any courage, and she seemed to know at last why she had been such a fool.  “She didn’t come?” she panted.

“Oh yes, she came; but there has been some mistake.  We want a telegram.”

“A telegram?”

“One that was sent from here ever so long ago.  There was something in it that has to be recovered.  Something very, very important, please—­we want it immediately.”

He really spoke to her as if she had been some strange young woman at Knightsbridge or Paddington; but it had no other effect on her than to give her the measure of his tremendous flurry.  Then it was that, above all, she felt how much she had missed in the gaps and blanks and absent answers—­how much she had had to dispense with:  it was now black darkness save for this little wild red flare.  So much as that she saw, so much her mind dealt with.  One of the lovers was quaking somewhere out of town, and the other was quaking just where he stood.  This was vivid enough, and after an instant she knew it was all she wanted.  She wanted no detail, no fact—­she wanted no nearer vision of discovery or shame.  “When was your telegram?  Do you mean you sent it from here?” She tried to do the young woman at Knightsbridge.

“Oh yes, from here—­several weeks ago.  Five, six, seven”—­he was confused and impatient—­“don’t you remember?”

“Remember?” she could scarcely keep out of her face, at the word, the strangest of smiles.

But the way he didn’t catch what it meant was perhaps even stranger still.  “I mean, don’t you keep the old ones?”