“You don’t mean to say Miss Heydinger—?” asked Parkson.

“Oh, damn Miss Heydinger!” said Lewisham, and suddenly, abruptly, uncivilly, he turned away from Parkson at the end of the street and began walking away southward, leaving Parkson in mid-sentence at the crossing.

Parkson stared in astonishment at his receding back and ran after him to ask for the grounds of this sudden offence.  Lewisham walked on for a space with Parkson trotting by his side.  Then suddenly he turned.  His face was quite white and he spoke in a tired voice.

“Parkson,” he said, “you are a fool!...  You have the face of a sheep, the manners of a buffalo, and the conversation of a bore, Pewrity indeed!...  The girl whose photograph you showed me has eyes that don’t match.  She looks as loathsome as one would naturally expect....  I’m not joking now....  Go away!”

After that Lewisham went on his southward way alone.  He did not go straight to his room in Chelsea, but spent some hours in a street in Battersea, pacing to and fro in front of a possible house.  His passion changed from savageness to a tender longing.  If only he could see her to-night!  He knew his own mind now.  To-morrow he was resolved he would fling work to the dogs and meet her.  The things Dunkerley had said had filled his mind with wonderful novel thoughts.  If only he could see her now!

His wish was granted.  At the corner of the street two figures passed him; one of these, a tall man in glasses and a quasi-clerical hat, with coat collar turned up under his grey side-whiskers, he recognised as Chaffery; the other he knew only too well.  The pair passed him without seeing him, but for an instant the lamplight fell upon her face and showed it white and tired.

Lewisham stopped dead at the corner, staring in blank astonishment after these two figures as they receded into the haze under the lights.  He was dumfounded.  A clock struck slowly.  It was midnight.  Presently down the road came the slamming of their door.

Long after the echo died away he stood there.  “She has been at a seance; she has broken her promise.  She has been at a seance; she has broken her promise,” sang in perpetual reiteration through his brain.

And then came the interpretation.  “She has done it because I have left her.  I might have told it from her letters.  She has done it because she thinks I am not in earnest, that my love-making was just boyishness ...

“I knew she would never understand.”

CHAPTER XIX.

LEWISHAM’S SOLUTION.

The next morning Lewisham learnt from Lagune that his intuition was correct, that Ethel had at last succumbed to pressure and consented to attempt thought-reading.  “We made a good beginning,” said Lagune, rubbing his hands.  “I am sure we shall do well with her.  Certainly she has powers.  I have always felt it in her face.  She has powers.”