“So you’ve got into your new room,” said John Orgreave.

Never before had he mounted to see George either in the new room or in the old room.  The simple fact of the presence there of one of the partners in the historic firm below compensated for much teasing sarcasm and half-veiled jealousy.  It was a sign.  It was a seal authenticating renown.

“Yes.”

“I only wanted to give you a message from Adela.  The Ingram young woman is staying with us——­”

“Lois?” The name shot out of him unbidden.

“Yes.  You’re humbly supplicated to go to tea to-day.  Four o’clock.  Thank God I’ve not forgotten it!”

George arrived fifty-five minutes late at Bedford Park.  Throughout the journey thither he kept repeating:  “She said I should do it.  And I’ve done it!  I’ve done it!  I’ve done it!” The triumph was still so close behind him that he was constantly realizing it afresh, and saying, wonder-struck:  “I’ve done it.”  And the miraculous phantasm of the town hall, uplifted in solid stone, formed itself again and again in his enchanted mind, against a background of tremendous new ambitions rising endlessly one behind another like snowy alps.

“Is this what you call four o’clock?” twittered Adela, between cajolery and protest, somewhat older and facially more artificial, but eternally blonde; still holding her fair head on one side and sinuously waving the palm.

“Sorry!  Sorry!  I was kept at the last moment by a journalist johnny.”

“Oh!  Of course!” said Adela, pooh-poohing with her lips.  “Of course we expect that story nowadays!”

“Well, it was a chap from the Builder, or I wouldn’t have seen him.  Can’t trifle with a trade paper, you know.”

He thought: 

“She’s like the rest of them, as jealous as the devil.”

Then Lois came into the room, hatted and gloved, in half-mourning.  She was pale, and appreciably thinner; she looked nervous, weak, and weary.  As he shook hands with her he felt very self-conscious, as though in winning the competition and fulfilling her prophecy he had done something dubious for which he ought to apologize.  This was exceedingly strange, but it was so.  She had been ill after the death of Irene Wheeler.  Having left Paris for London on the day following the races, he had written to her about nothing in particular, a letter which meant everything but what it said—­and had received an answer from Laurencine, who announced that her sister was in bed, and likely to be in bed; and that father and mother wished to be remembered to him.  Then he wrote to Laurencine.  When the result of the final competition was published he had written again to Lois.  It seemed to him that he was bound to do so, for had she not willed and decided his victory?  No reply; but there had scarcely been time for a reply.

“Did you get my letter?” he smiled.

“This afternoon,” she said gravely.  “It followed me here.  Now I have to go to Irene’s flat.  I should have been gone in another minute.”