Miss Heydinger made no answer.  Her silence astonished him.  For nearly twenty seconds perhaps they sat without speaking.  With a quick motion she stood up, and at once he stood up before her.  Her face was flushed, her eyes downcast.

“Good-bye,” she said suddenly in a low tone and held out her hand.

“But,” said Lewisham and stopped.  Miss Heydinger’s colour left her.

“Good-bye,” she said, looking him suddenly in the eyes and smiling awry.  “There is no more to say, is there?  Good-bye.”

He took her hand.  “I hope I didn’t—­”

“Good-bye,” she said impatiently, and suddenly disengaged her hand and turned away from him.  He made a step after her.

“Miss Heydinger,” he said, but she did not stop.  “Miss Heydinger.”  He realised that she did not want to answer him again....

He remained motionless, watching her retreating figure.  An extraordinary sense of loss came into his mind, a vague impulse to pursue her and pour out vague passionate protestations....

Not once did she look back.  She was already remote when he began hurrying after her.  Once he was in motion he quickened his pace and gained upon her.  He was within thirty yards of her as she drew near the gates.

His pace slackened.  Suddenly he was afraid she might look back.  She passed out of the gates, out of his sight.  He stopped, looking where she had disappeared.  He sighed and took the pathway to his left that led back to the bridge and Vigours’.

Halfway across this bridge came another crisis of indecision.  He stopped, hesitating.  An impertinent thought obtruded.  He looked at his watch and saw that he must hurry if he would catch the train for Earl’s Court and Vigours’.  He said Vigours’ might go to the devil.

But in the end he caught his train.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE CROWNING VICTORY.

That night about seven Ethel came into their room with a waste-paper basket she had bought for him, and found him sitting at the little toilet table at which he was to “write.”  The outlook was, for a London outlook, spacious, down a long slope of roofs towards the Junction, a huge sky of blue passing upward to the darkling zenith and downward into a hazy bristling mystery of roofs and chimneys, from which emerged signal lights and steam puffs, gliding chains of lit window carriages and the vague vistas of streets.  She showed him the basket and put it beside him, and then her eye caught the yellow document in his hand.  “What is that you have there?”

He held it out to her.  “I found it—­lining my yellow box.  I had it at Whortley.”

She took it and perceived a chronological scheme.  It was headed “SCHEMA,” there were memoranda in the margin, and all the dates had been altered by a hasty hand.

“Hasn’t it got yellow?” she said.

That seemed to him the wrong thing for her to say.  He stared at the document with a sudden accession of sympathy.  There was an interval.  He became aware of her hand upon his shoulder, that she was bending over him.  “Dear,” she whispered, with a strange change in the quality of her voice.  He knew she was seeking to say something that was difficult to say.