“Go home and persuade her to write another,” said Mrs. Lessingham.  “Let her confess that there was a misunderstanding.  I am sure Mrs. Travis will accept it.  She has a curious character; very sensitive, and very impulsive, but essentially trustful and warm-hearted.  You should have heard the pathetic surprise with which she told me of Cecily’s letter.”

“I should rather have imagined her speaking contemptuously.”

“It would have been excusable,” replied the other, with a laugh.  “And very likely that would have been her tone had it concerned any one else.  But she has a liking for Cecily.  Go home, and get this foolish mistake remedied, there’s a good boy.”

Elgar left the house and walked eastward, into Praed Street.  As he walked, he grew less and less inclined to go home at once.  He could not resolve how to act.  It would be a satisfaction to have done with discord, but he had no mind to submit to Cecily and entreat her to a peace.

He walked on, across Edgware Road, into Marylebone Road, absorbed in his thoughts.  Their complexion became darker.  He found a perverse satisfaction in picturing Cecily’s unhappiness.  Let her suffer a little; she was causing him uneasiness enough.  The probability was that she derided his recent behaviour; it had doubtless sunk him still more in her estimation.  The only way to recover his lost ground was to be as open with her as formerly, to confess all his weaknesses and foolish motives; but his will resisted.  He felt coldly towards her; she was no longer the woman he loved and worshipped, but one who had asserted a superiority of mind and character, and belittled him to himself.  He was tired of her society—­the simple formula which sufficiently explains so many domestic troubles.

He would have lunch somewhere in town; then see whether he felt disposed to go home or not.

In the afternoon he loitered about the Strand, looking at portraits in shop-windows and at the theatre-doors.  Home was more, instead of less, repugnant to him.  He wanted to postpone decision; but if he returned to Cecily, it would be necessary to say something, and in his present mood he would be sure to make matters worse, for he felt quarrelsome.  How absurd it was for two people, just because they were married, to live perpetually within sight of each other!  Wasn’t it Godwin who, on marrying, made an arrangement that he and his wife should inhabit separate abodes, and be together only when they wished?  The only rational plan, that.  Should he take train and go out of town for a few days?  If only he had some one for company; but it was wearisome to spend the time in solitude.

To aggravate his dulness, the sky had clouded over, and presently it began to rain.  He had no umbrella.  Quite unable to determine whither he should go if he took a cab, he turned aside to the shelter of an archway.  Some one was already standing there, but in his abstraction he did not know whether it was man or woman, until a little cough, twice or thrice repeated, made him turn his eyes.  Then he saw that his companion was a girl of about five-and-twenty, with a pretty, good-natured face, which wore an embarrassed smile.  He gazed at her with a look of surprised recognition.