They stopped the taxi and composed a message. He despatched it.
Did you put advertisement in paper to-day? And are you ill? I am quite well and will write at once. Wire reply to Silver Locks, General Post-Office.
Then they told the man to drive around Regent's Park, to pass the time till there should be an answer.
In the park the trees were already brown, and on the pale, trampled grass long heaps of rags, like black grave-mounds, showed where weary men who had tramped London all night, moved on by Law and Order, inexorable in blue and silver, now at last had their sleep out, in broad sunshine, under the eyes of the richest city in the world. Little children, dirty and poor—their childhood triumphant over dirt and poverty—played happily in the grass that was less grass than dust.
"What a horrible place London is!" she said. "Think of yesterday."
That, too, he put away to be taken out and loved later.
"We won't stay in London," he said, "if the answer is what I think it will be. We'll go out into the green country and decide what we're going to do."
"But if she did put the advertisement in, it means that she's very ill. And then I must go to her."
"But if she didn't—and I more and more think she didn't—they may send some one to the General Post-Office post-haste—so it won't do for you to go for the telegram. Do you know the Guildhall Library?"