"I am going," he said to himself, "to put my cards down on the table. I am going to own up, and to act on the square, and to be chucked for doing it, and to leave this blighted place to-morrow."
In his small bedroom at the very top of the house he arrayed himself with his usual scrupulous care. He wore a pair of the yellowest boots in Sefton-on-Sea, waistcoat and trousers of grey flannel, a dark blue smoking-jacket of the reach-me-down or Edgware Road order, and a straw hat adorned with the bewitching colours of the Advance Guard Cycling Club. His necktie was of the palest saffron, saving for such stains as it had acquired by natural wear and tear. He surveyed himself in the looking-glass and was satisfied.
Considering that he was really rather a nice-looking young man, he was a pretty bad sight. He had dark, wavy hair, and a girl had once said that he had the most pathetic eyes in Brixton. He lived at Brixton, and so did the girl. That was now merely an incident in the dead past.
He selected one of those cigarettes the principal characteristic of which is that you get an amazing amount of them for threepence. He shut the case with a snap—a real silver case which gave him pleasure—and so he went forth jauntily. He was going to his doom, of course, and he knew that he was going to his doom. But as his way to his doom lay along the sea-front, it was as well for the present to keep up appearances. From the sea-front he reached the pier, cast down his penny at the turnstiles, and walked up to the further end of it to a secluded seat behind the little pavilion where they let the entertainments loose. There he waited, leaning forward with his rather weak chin on the handle of his walking-stick. For a moment the wicked thought flashed across him that there was no necessity for him to put his cards down on the table, that he might as well have played the game out to the end. He cast the temptation from him. He would lose the girl, of course, but there was the very devil in it. He would rather lose her fairly than leave her with the glittering but untrue portrait of himself that she must now possess.
He looked up and saw the girl herself walking towards him.
"Walks like a queen," he said to himself. "Walks as if she'd bought the whole place, and could pay for it—and she gets thirty bob a week from a Dover Street milliner. You couldn't hardly believe it." Then he arose and lifted his absurd hat.
The girl shook hands with him frankly. She was simply and quietly dressed, but perhaps her profession gave her advantages there.
"Good afternoon, Mr Porter," she said. "You are getting splendid weather for your last day here." She was a pretty girl with enigmatical eyes, and her voice was softer and pleasanter than the voice of Mr Sigismund Porter.
"Yes," said Mr Porter, gloomily, "the weather's a bit of all right, I suppose, if the weather were everything."
"But the weather is quite a good deal, isn't it?" said the girl, cheerfully. "You wouldn't enjoy your run on your motor-car up to the Lakes if it came on wet."