“Do I? And I am! I am! I’m much worse, and nobody,” she almost sobbed, “is so unhappy! Charles, will you wait here for a minute? I must just—just walk round the square.”
“You’ll come back?”
She nodded, and he kept the bag as hostage.
The large policeman had strolled back. He saw the tall young man standing over the bag and thought it would be well to keep an eye on him, but Charles did not notice the policeman. His whole attention was for Henrietta’s reappearance. She would come back because she had said she would, but if she did not come alone there would be trouble. He did not, however, expect to see Francis Sales: he gathered that Sales had failed her, and he was sorry. He would have beaten him, somehow; he would have conquered for the first time in his life, and now he felt that his task was going to be too easy. He wished he could have sweated and panted in the doing of it; and when Henrietta returned alone, walking with an angry swiftness, he felt a genuine regret.
“Come along, Charles,” she said briskly. “Let us have dinner.”
He could see the brightness of her eyes, looking past him; her lips had a fixed smile and he wished she would cry again. “She is crying inside,” he told himself. He moved forward beside her vaguely. The tenderness of his love for her was like a powerful, warm wave, sweeping over him and making him helpless for the time. He could do nothing against it, he had to be carried with it, but suddenly it receded, leaving him high and dry and unromantically in contact with a lamp-post. His hat had fallen off.
“What are you doing?” Henrietta asked irritably.
He rubbed his head. “Bumped it. I was thinking about you.”
“What were you thinking?” she asked defiantly.
“Oh, well—” he said.