“I must not lose you,” he cried, drunk with her beauty and doubly drunk with her sensuous idealism.  “May I not even kiss you?”

“Well, if you like—­once, just here,” she said, pointing where white melted to faint rose.

Mastered, he followed her down the long stairs; but when they passed into the open air he felt he had lost her irrevocably.  The river was now tinted with setting light, the balustrade of Waterloo Bridge showed like lace-work, the glass roofing of Charing Cross station was golden, and each spire distinct upon the moveless blue.  The splashing of a steamer sounded strange upon his ears.  The “Citizen” passed!  She was crowded with human beings, all apparently alike.  Then the eye separated them.  An old lady making her way down the deck, a young man in gray clothes, a red soldier leaning over the rail, the captain walking on the bridge.

Mike called a hansom; a few seconds more and she would pass from him into London.  He saw the horse’s hooves, saw the cab appear and disappear behind other cabs; it turned a corner, and she was gone.

CHAPTER III

Seven hours had elapsed since he had parted from Lily Young, and these seven hours he had spent in restaurants and music-halls, seeking in dissipation surcease of sorrow and disappointment.  He had dined at Lubi’s, and had gone on with Lord Muchross and Lord Snowdown to the Royal, and they had returned in many hansoms and with many courtesans to drink at Lubi’s.  But his heart was not in gaiety, and feeling he could neither break a hat joyously nor allow his own to be broken good-humouredly, nor even sympathize with Dicky, the driver, who had not been sober since Monday, he turned and left the place.

“This is why fellows marry,” he said, when he returned home, and sat smoking in the shadows—­he had lighted only one lamp—­depressed by the loneliness of the apartment.  And more than an hour passed before he heard Frank’s steps.  Frank was in evening dress; he opened his cigarette-case, lighted a cigarette, and sat down willing to be amused.  Mike told him the entire story with gestures and descriptive touches; on the right was the bed with its curtains hanging superbly, on the left the great hay-boats filling the window; and by insisting on the cruelest aspects, he succeeded in rendering it almost unbearable.  But Frank had dined well, and as Lizzie had promised to come to breakfast he was in excellent humour, and on the whole relished the tale.  He was duly impressed and interested by the subtlety of the fancy which made Lily tell how she used to identify her ideal lover while praying to Him, Him with the human ideal which had led her from the cloister, and which she had come to seek in the world.  He was especially struck with, and he admired the conclusion of, the story, for Mike had invented a dramatic and effective ending.

“Well-nigh mad, drunk with her beauty and the sensuous charm of her imagination, I threw my arms about her.  I felt her limbs against mine, and I said, ’I am mad for you; give yourself to me, and make this afternoon memorable.’  There was a faint smile of reply in her eyes.  They laughed gently, and she said, ’Well, perhaps I do love you a little.’”