Nor did the new feelings subside as rapidly as they had arisen.  At home that night he was unable to settle to his usual occupations, and, as a visit to his friends in the Masters’ Room would have been equally distasteful, he rambled about the streets and so tired himself.  His duties did not take him up to the children’s classroom on the following morning, but he invented an excuse for going there, and felt rewarded by the very faint smile and the inclination of the head with which Miss Enderby returned his “good morning.”  Day after day, he schemed to obtain an opportunity of speaking with her again, and he fancied that she herself helped to remove any chances that might have occurred.  Throughout his lessons, his attention remained fixed upon her; he studied her face intently, and was constantly discovering in it new meanings.  When she caught his eyes thus busy with her, she evinced, for a moment, trouble and uneasiness; he felt sure that she arranged her seat so as to have her back to him more frequently than she had been accustomed to do.  Her work appeared to him to be done with less self-forgetfulness than formerly; the rioting and impertinence of the children seemed to trouble her more; she bore Mrs. Tootle’s interference with something like fear.  Once, when Master Felix had gone beyond his wonted licence, in his mother’s absence, Waymark went so far as to call him to order.  As soon as he had spoken, the girl looked up at him in a startled way, and seemed silently to beg him to refrain.  All this only strengthened the influence she exercised upon Waymark.

Since the climax of wretchedness which had resulted in his advertisement and the forming of Julian Casti’s acquaintance, a moderate cheerfulness had possessed him.  Now he once more felt the clouds sinking about him, was aware of many a threatening portent, the meaning whereof he too well understood.  There had been a week or two of prevailing bad weather, a state of things which always wrought harmfully upon him; his thoughts darkened under the dark sky, and the daily downpour of rain sapped his energies.  It was within a few days of Easter, but the prospect of a holiday had no effect upon him.  Night after night he lay in fever and unrest.  He felt as though some voice were calling upon him to undertake a vaguely hazardous enterprise which yet he knew not the nature of.

On one of these evenings, Mr. O’Gree announced to him that Miss Enderby was going to give up her position at the end of the quarter.  Philip had gathered this from a conversation heard during the day between Dr. Tootle and his wife.

“The light of my life will be gone out,” exclaimed O’Gree, “when I am no longer able to catch a glimpse of her as she goes past the schoolroom door.  And I’ve never even had a chance of speaking to her.  You know the tale of Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth.  Suppose I were to rush out and throw my top-coat on the muddy door-step, just as she’s going out; d’ye think she’d say thank you?”