"Very well," she said.
And, after that, they shook hands quite formally, and parted in Fleet Street. He had been in heaven for twenty minutes.
There were three days to Monday.
Lilian!
VI
Out of this period of his career, Humphrey rescued memories of moments of ineffable happiness. They came intermittently, between long blanks of doubt and painful uncertainty, when his mind was troubled with unsatisfied yearnings and half-understood desires. He was able one day to look back upon it all, with an air of detached interest, like a man looking at a cinematograph picture, and he saw meetings, and partings, and all the ferment of his wooing of Lilian.
There was something intimate and secret about their meetings that pleased his palate, hungry for adventure, and this was a part of life that belonged wholly to them; he was indeed taking a part in the great game.
They met on the Monday at the hour appointed, and it seemed extraordinarily unreal, like a dream within a dream, that she should be wonderfully alive and smiling by his side. Fleet Street, the office, Rivers, and the long toil of the day were forgotten in a moment, such was the miracle of her being. It seemed impossible to him, on that day, that unhappiness and failure could darken his world. There was something eternal about her that moved him with strong, unquenchable desires for triumph and conquest. Her voice vibrated through him like the throb of a war-march, urging him to great endeavour.