They had come to the parting of their way from Carminow’s, and all three were standing at the street corner under a flickering gas lamp.

“Well,” said Carminow a little awkwardly, “I suppose now we’ve met I shall be seeing you fellows again?  I’m genewally in in the evenings when I don’t have to be on duty at the hospital.”

It was Ishmael who replied: 

“I shall probably be round some time soon,” he said.  “I shall want to hear how the new drop worked, you know.  By the way, what theatre is Miss Grey appearing at?  It might be interesting to go and see the performance, mightn’t it, Joe?”

“Oh, damn it all!  I can only think for the moment of poor little Hilaria,” exclaimed Killigrew.  “I used to be very fond of her....  I wonder—­”

“I’ll find out if she’d like to see you and Ruan when next I go if you like, but it’s painful, because she can only get her words out in jerks,” said Carminow.  “It’s the Strand that Miss Grey’s appearing at.  Quite a small part; but at least it’s a lady-like one, and her stage name is Miss Blanche Nevill.  Good-night, you fellows!”

They echoed his farewell, and then, finding no belated growler, set out to walk all the way back to Tavistock Square.  They mentioned neither Hilaria nor Blanche Grey again that night, but as Ishmael lay for a long time awake staring into the darkness he could not keep his mind from reverting with a sense of deep fear to what he had heard about Hilaria.  That such things could lie in wait in life, around the path of people one knew—­people like oneself....  To others these exotic misfortunes, not to oneself or those near one.  He had the sensation of incredulity with which one hears of some intimate friend involved in a train accident or attacked by some freakish fate such as may be read of in the newspapers daily but is never realised as being an actual and possible happening.  Polkinghorne’s death had made him believe there was such a thing as death, but it was so remote.  This was different.  If these things could come into life, ordinary every-day life....

He sorrowed not only for Hilaria, but for life.  The news had given him his first pang of dread about it; his trust in it was never to be quite the same again.  That was all, for him, that Hilaria had existed for, simply to teach him so much of knowledge.  It seemed odd, even to the egoism of his youth, that she should have had so great a share in the pattern of his life at one time only to go out of it so inevitably.  He was not to realise for many years how important the lesson was of which she, by the mere news of her state, had taught him the beginnings.  If her contact with him formerly had been less, so would the shock of the news have been.  People have impinged more deeply upon others’ lives and both by their entry and their leaving of them stood for less.

CHAPTER X

BLIND STEPS