Miss Mivvins did not altogether seem herself; was nothing like so bright as she had been before. The sweet mouth never parted in laughter once during all the walk. It was a new mood to him; one in which he could find no pleasantness.
He taxed her with it; something was worrying her. He would have liked to plainly ask what, that he might lighten or at least share the trouble. She, not admitting it, endeavoured to shake off the depression.
As their good-byes were uttered, he exhibited a surprising fertility in the invention of hints of meetings again. She, for reasons known to herself, did not take them.
The weather afforded her a shield; she switched the conversation on to that. Clouds were shaping ominously; there was a prospect of more foul weather on the breaking of the morrow. So was avoided any open reference to another evening walk when they parted.
Clouds, of another kind, seemed to envelop him. He had counted so on the meeting; had watched the ticking away of the hours till the fall of eventide: and after, till eight o'clock came.
All the warmth of the previous evening, all his delicious anticipation, was eclipsed by the frigidity of to-night. He felt like one for whom the sun has set while it is yet day.
He worried himself to the point of haggardness: being a man possessed of strong emotions. Walked home mind-laden with fear that he had done or said something to offend her. Racking his brain, yet failed to find a record; could not imagine what had been his sin.
His slumber was not of the peaceful kind. Although his dreams were of her—the woman his waking thoughts were so full of—they were not of the pleasant kind of yesternight. Again, too, he saw the red fringe in the east grow into dawn before he slept.
A warm, drizzling rainy day; so he found the weather on awaking. So warm that at breakfast he had his window open; his landlady referred to the condition of things as being muggy. That was not the only speech of hers he heard that morning.
The proverb about listeners and the good things they hear occurred to him. By reason of the open window he was unable to avoid overhearing a conversation. It was carried on between the next door landlady and his own.