He reached London in the midst of a rainy fog.  The endless black streets stretched before him in the dreary December morning like so many roads into the nether regions; the gas-lamps scattered an unseasonable light through the rain and fog; it was the quintessence of murky, cheerless winter.

He reached his own rooms, and found his man up and waiting for him, and a meal ready.  It was but three days since he had been last there, the open telegram was still lying on the table.  One of his first acts was to put it hastily out of sight.  Over his breakfast he planned his embassy to Miss Bretherton.  The best time to find her alone, he imagined, would be about mid-day, and in the interval he would put his books and papers to rights.  They lay scattered about—­books, proofs, and manuscript.  As his orderly hands went to work upon them, he was conscious that he had never been so remote from all that they represented.  But his nature was faithful and tenacious, and under the outward sense of detachment there was an inward promise of return.  ‘I will come back to you,’ seemed to be the cry of his thought.  ’You shall be my only friends.  But first I must see her, and all my heart is hers!’

The morning dragged away, and at half-past eleven he went out, carrying the little case with him.  As he stood outside the Bayswater house, in which she had settled for the winter, he realised that he had never yet been under her roof, never yet seen her at home.  It was his own fault.  She had asked him in her gracious way, on the first night of Elvira, to come and see her.  But, instead of doing so, he had buried himself in his Surrey lodging, striving to bring the sober and austere influences of the country to bear upon the feverish indecision of his mood.  Perhaps his disappearance and silence had wounded her; after all, he knew that he had some place in her thoughts.

The servant who opened the door demurred to his request to see Miss Bretherton.  ’The doctor says, sir, that at home she must keep quiet; she has not seen any visitors just lately.’  But Kendal persisted, and his card was taken in, while he waited the result.  The servant hurried along the ground-floor passage, knocked at the door at the farther end, went in for a moment, and came out beckoning to him.  He obeyed with a beating heart, and she threw open the door for him.

Inside stood Isabel Bretherton, with eager surprise and pleasure in her whole attitude.  She had just risen from her chair, and was coming forward; a soft white cashmere shawl hung around her; her dress, of some dark rich stuff, fell with the flowing, stately lines peculiar to it; her face was slightly flushed, and the brilliancy of her colour, of her hair, of her white, outstretched hand, seemed to Kendal to take all the chill and gloom out of the winter air.  She held some proof sheets of a new play in her hand, and the rest lay piled beside her on a little table.

‘How kind of you, Mr. Kendal,’ she said, advancing with her quick impulsive step towards him.  ’I thought you had forgotten us, and I have been wanting your advice so badly!  I have just been complaining of you a little in a letter to Madame de Chateauvieux!  She—­’