“Nothing pleases you so much as to be allowed to talk nonsense about yourself.”

Mike laughed.

“Let me have those opera-glasses.  That woman sitting on the bench is like her.”

The trees of the embankment waved along the laughing water, and in scores the sparrows flitted across the sleek green sward.  The porter in his bright uniform, cocked hat, and brass buttons, explained the way out to a woman.  Her child wore a red sash and stooped to play with a cat that came along the railings, its tail high in the air.

“They know nothing of Lily Young,” Mike said to himself; and knowing the porter could not interfere, he wondered what he would think if he knew all.  “If she comes nothing can save her, she must and shall be mine.”

Waterloo Bridge stood high above the river, level and lovely.  Over Charing Cross the brightness was full of spires and pinnacles, but Southwark shore was lost in flat dimness.  Then the sun glowed and Westminster ascended tall and romantic, St. Thomas’s and St. John’s floating in pale enchantment, and beneath the haze that heaved and drifted, revealing coal-barges moored by the Southwark shore, lay a sheet of gold.  The candour of the morning laughed upon the river; and there came a little steamer into the dazzling water, her smoke heeling over, coiling and uncoiling like a snake, and casting tremendous shadow—­in her train a line of boats laden to the edge with deal planks.  Then the haze heaved and London disappeared, became again a gray city, faint and far away—­faint as spires seem in a dream.  Again and again the haze wreathed and went out, discovering wharfs and gold inscriptions, uncovering barges aground upon the purple slime of the Southwark shore, their yellow yards pointing like birds with outstretched necks.

The smoke of the little steamer curled and rolled over, now like a great snake, now like a great bird hovering with a snake in its talons; and the little steamer made pluckily for Blackfriars.  Carts and hansoms, vans and brewers’ vans, all silhouetting.  Trains slip past, obliterating with white whiffs the delicate distances, the perplexing distances that in London are delicate and perplexing as a spider’s web.  Great hay-boats yellow in the sun, brown in the shadow—­great hay-boats came by, their sails scarce filled with the light breeze; standing high, they sailed slowly and picturesquely, with men thrown in all attitudes; somnolent in sunshine and pungent odour—­one only at work, wielding the great rudder.

“Ah! if she would not disappoint me; if she would only come; I would give my life not to be disappointed....  Three o’clock!  She said she would be here by three, if she came at all.  I think I could love her—­I am sure of it; it would be impossible to weary of her—­so frail—­a white blonde.  She said she would come, I know she wanted to....  This waiting is agony!  Oh, if I were only good-looking!  Whatever power I have over