“No,” he said slowly.  “I don’t mind even that.  I don’t care—­even if it was that.”

Abruptly they turned into the King’s Road, with its roar of wheeled traffic and hurrying foot-passengers, and forthwith a crowd of boys with a broken-spirited Guy involved and separated them.  In a busy highway of a night one must needs talk disconnectedly in shouted snatches or else hold one’s peace.  He glanced at her face and saw that it was set again.  Presently she turned southward out of the tumult into a street of darkness and warm blinds, and they could go on talking again.

“I understand what you mean,” said Lewisham.  “I know I do.  You knew, but you did not want to know.  It was like that.”

But her mind had been active.  “At the end of this road,” she said, gulping a sob, “you must go back.  It was kind of you to come, Mr. Lewisham.  But you were ashamed—­you are sure to be ashamed.  My employer is a spiritualist, and my stepfather is a professional Medium, and my mother is a spiritualist.  You were quite right not to speak to me last night.  Quite.  It was kind of you to come, but you must go back.  Life is hard enough as it is ...  You must go back at the end of the road.  Go back at the end of the road ...”

Lewisham made no reply for a hundred yards.  “I’m coming on to Clapham,” he said.

They came to the end of the road in silence.  Then at the kerb corner she turned and faced him.  “Go back,” she whispered.

“No,” he said obstinately, and they stood face to face at the cardinal point of their lives.

“Listen to me,” said Lewisham.  “It is hard to say what I feel.  I don’t know myself....  But I’m not going to lose you like this.  I’m not going to let you slip a second time.  I was awake about it all last night.  I don’t care where you are, what your people are, nor very much whether you’ve kept quite clear of this medium humbug.  I don’t.  You will in future.  Anyhow.  I’ve had a day and night to think it over.  I had to come and try to find you.  It’s you.  I’ve never forgotten you.  Never.  I’m not going to be sent back like this.”

“It can be no good for either of us,” she said as resolute as he.

“I shan’t leave you.”

“But what is the good?...”

“I’m coming,” said Lewisham, dogmatically.

And he came.

He asked her a question point blank and she would not answer him, and for some way they walked in grim silence.  Presently she spoke with a twitching mouth.  “I wish you would leave me,” she said.  “You are quite different from what I am.  You felt that last night.  You helped find us out....”

“When first I came to London I used to wander about Clapham looking for you,” said Lewisham, “week after week.”

They had crossed the bridge and were in a narrow little street of shabby shops near Clapham Junction before they talked again.  She kept her face averted and expressionless.