That very evening he sat down and resolved to work.  He had an appetite for it once more.  He worked till long after midnight, and on the morrow kept his old hours.  Moreover, he wrote a long letter to Hawes, a good, frank letter, giving his father a full account of the meetings with Daniel and Alexander, and telling all about the pecuniary transactions:—­“I hope you will not think I behaved very foolishly.  Indeed, it has given me pleasure to share with them.  My trouble is lest you should think I acted in complete disregard of you; but, if I am glad to do a good turn, remember, dear father, that it is to you I owe this habit of mind.  And I shall not need money.  I feel it practically certain that I shall get my office, and then it will go smoothly.  The examination draws near, and I am working like a Trojan!”

“I cannot carp at you,” wrote Jerome Otway in reply, “but tighten the purse-strings after this, and be not overmuch familiar with Alexander the Little or Daniel the Purblind.  Their ways are not mine; let them not be yours!”

He had to run up to town for the trying-on of his new garments, and this time the business gave him satisfaction.  In future he would be seeing much more society; he must have a decent regard for appearances.

His spirits faltered not; they were in harmony with the June weather.  Never had he laboured to such purpose.  Everything seemed easy; he strode with giant strides into the field of knowledge.  Papers such as would be set him at the examination were matter for his mirth, mere schoolboy tests.  Now and then he rose from study with a troublesome dizziness, and of a morning his head generally ached a little; but these were trifles. Prisch zu!—­as a German friend of his at Geneva used to say.

Even on the morning of the great day he worked; it was to prove his will-power, his worthiness.  After lunch, clad in the garb of respectability, he went up by a quick train.

His evening suit he had previously despatched to Alexander’s abode, where he was to dine and dress.

At four o’clock he was in Bryanston Square, tremulous but sanguine, a different man from him who had sneaked about here under the umbrella.  He knocked.  The servant civilly informed him that Miss Derwent was not at home, asked his name, and bowed him away.

It was a shock.  This possibility had not entered his mind, so engrossed was he in forecasting, in dramatising, the details of the interview.  Looking like one who has received some dreadful news, he turned slowly from the door and walked away with head down.  Probably no event in all his life had given him such a sense of desolating frustration.  At once the sky was overcast, the ways were woebegone; he shrank within his new garments, and endured once more the feeling of personal paltriness.

Though the time before him was so long, he had no choice but to go at once to Theobald’s Road, where at all events friendly faces would greet him.  The streets of London are terrible to one who is both lonely and unhappy; the indifference of their hard egotism becomes fierce hostility; instead of merely disregarding, they crush.  As soon as he could command his thoughts, Piers made for the shortest way, and hurried on.