"No—don't bother. It doesn't matter at all."
The next day he was walking down Fleet Street when he perceived her looming through the crowd. He was conscious of a queer emotion that attacked him, a sudden dryness of the throat, and a quickening of all the pulses of his body. His whole being became swiftly taut: he almost stood still. And, as she bore down upon him, he saw that she was not so tall as he had imagined, but her face looked divinely attractive under the shadow of the spreading hat, and because the sun was shining her hair glittered like a halo. Now, she was close to him, and he found himself praying to God that she would look at him, and smile again; and the next moment he felt that the ground would sink beneath him if she did so, and he longed to look the other way, but could not. The people passing to and fro knew nothing of the terrific disturbance that was going on in the mind of the young man walking down Fleet Street. Now they were level—he raised his hat—it was over, and the memory of her smile had sunk yet deeper within him. Yes, she had remembered him, and nodded to him, and that smile—what did it mean? It was not an enticing smile, it was an almost imperceptible movement of the closed lips, yet it held some magic in it. It seemed to him that though they had never spoken, she knew all about him; she came across his life, smiling in silence, and he was aware that something triumphant and fresh had come into his life, with her passing, just as he knew for a certainty that, before long, he would learn the secret of her smile, when he spoke to her.
He went back to work, curiously elated and happy for no reason at all that he could understand. Things were unaltered, and yet, somehow or other, they were different. He felt, suddenly, as if years had been added to his age; he felt that he had met something real in life at last, and, when he came to analyse it, it was nothing but an intangible smile, and the glance of two grey eyes.
That night, as he was on his way home, he chanced to meet Wratten. This tall man with the high forehead and curly hair was one of the puzzles of the office. He was a man who held aloof from his fellows, and because of that, they thought he was morose. Humphrey had a tremendous admiration for him, since the night when Wratten had helped him. He seemed so very splendid: he did daring things, and he never failed. The secret of his success was a brutality that stultified all his better feelings when he was on business. And he was a man who never left his quarry, though it meant waiting hours and hours for him.
"Hullo," said Wratten, "where are you off to?"
"Home," said Humphrey; "where are you?"
"I'm going home too. I live at the Hampden Club at King's Cross."
They were near Guilford Street "Won't you come up, Wratten, and have a drink in my rooms—I live here, you know."
"I don't take anything stronger than lemonade," said Wratten.