As I walked across Westminster Bridge on my homeward way it seemed as if London had grown less hostile.  Big Ben chimed twelve and there was a distinct Dick Whittington touch about the music.  The light on the tower no longer mocked me.  As I passed by the gates of Palace Yard, a policeman on duty recognised me and saluted.  I strode on with a springier tread and noticed that the next policeman who did not know me, still regarded me with an air of benevolence.  A pale moon shone in the heavens and gave me shyly to understand that she was as much my moon as any one else’s.  As I turned into Victoria Street, omnibuses passed me with a lurch of friendliness.  The ban was lifted.  I danced (figuratively) along the pavement.

What it portended I did not realise.  I was conscious of nothing but a spiritual exhilaration comparable only with the physical exhilaration I experienced in the garden at Algiers when my bodily health had been finally established.  As the body then felt the need of expressing itself in violent action—­in leaping and running (an impulse which I firmly subdued), so now did my spirit crave some sort of expression in violent emotion.  I was in a mood for enraptured converse with an archangel.

Looking back, I see that Campion’s friendly “Hallo” had awakened me from a world of shadows and set me among realities; the impact of Milligan’s vehement personality had changed the conditions of my life from static to dynamic; and that a Providence which is not always as ironical as it pleases us to assert had sent Eleanor Faversham’s graciousness to mitigate the severity of the shock.  I see how just was Lola’s diagnosis.  “You’re not quite alive even yet.”  I had been going about in a state of suspended spiritual animation.

My recovery dated from that evening.

CHAPTER XIX

Agatha proved herself the good soul I had represented her to be.

“Certainly, dear,” she said when I came the following morning with my request.  “You can have my boudoir all to yourselves.”

“I am grateful,” said I, “and for the first time I forgive you for calling it by that abominable name.”

It was an old quarrel between us.  Every lover of language picks out certain words in common use that he hates with an unreasoning ferocity.

“I’ll change it’s title if you like,” she said meekly.

“If you do, my dear Agatha, my gratitude will be eternal.”

“I remember a certain superior person, when Tom and I were engaged, calling mother’s boudoir—­the only quiet place in the house—­the osculatorium.”

She laughed with the air of a small bird who after long waiting had at last got even with a hawk.  But I did not even smile.  For the only time in our lives I considered that Agatha had committed a breach of good taste.  I said rather stiffly: 

“It is not going to be a lovers’ meeting, my dear.”