He could not find leisure to dine till nearly nine o’clock.  He had made up his mind not to return to Wimbledon, but to make use of a certain pied-a-terre which he had in Pimlico.  His day’s work ended in Westminster, he dined at a restaurant with a friend.  Afterwards billiards were proposed.  They entered a house which Rodman did not know, and were passing before the bar to go to the billiard-room, when a man who stood there taking refreshment called out, ‘Hollo, Rodman!’ To announce a man’s name in this way is a decided breach of etiquette in the world to which Rodman belonged.  He looked annoyed, and would have passed on, but his acquaintance, who had perhaps exceeded the limits of modest refreshment, called him again and obliged him to approach the bar.  As he did so Rodman happened to glance at the woman who stood ready to fulfil the expected order.  The glance was followed by a short but close scrutiny, after which he turned his back and endeavoured by a sign to draw his two acquaintances away.  But at the same moment the barmaid addressed him.

‘What is yours, Mr. Rodman?’

He shrugged his shoulders, muttered a strong expression, and turned round again.  The woman met his look steadily.  She was perhaps thirty, rather tall, with features more refined than her position would have led one to expect.  Her figure was good but meagre; her cheeks were very thin, and the expression of her face, not quite amiable at any time, was at present almost fierce.  She seemed about to say something further, but restrained herself.

Rodman recovered his good temper.

‘How do, Clara?’ he said, keeping his eye fixed on hers.  ’I’ll have a drop of absinthe, if you please.’

Then he pursued his conversation with the two men.  The woman, having served them, disappeared.  Rodman kept looking for her.  In a few minutes he pretended to recollect an engagement and succeeded in going off alone.  As he issued on to the pavement he found himself confronted by the barmaid, who now wore a hat and cloak.

‘Well?’ he said, carelessly.

‘Rodman’s your name, is it?’ was the reply.

’To my particular friends.  Let’s walk on; we can’t chat here very well.’

’What is to prevent me from calling that policeman and giving you in charge?’ she asked, looking into his face with a strange mixture of curiosity and anger.

’Nothing, except that you have no charge to make against me.  The law isn’t so obliging as all that.  Come, we’ll take a walk.’

She moved along by his side.

‘You coward!’ she exclaimed, passionately but with none of the shrieking virulence of women who like to make a scene in the street.  ’You mean, contemptible, cold-blooded man!  I suppose you hoped I was starved to death by this time, or in the workhouse, or—­what did you care where I was!  I knew I should find you some day.’

‘I rather supposed you would stay on the other side of the water,’ Rodman remarked, glancing at her.  ’You’re changed a good deal.  Now it’s a most extraordinary thing.  Not so very long ago I was dreaming about you, and you were serving at a bar—­queer thing, wasn’t it?’