Gwen returned to town about the time of the third offence, and remonstrated forcibly with him, but made no visible effect.
“Have you seen Paddy again?” she asked him.
“She will not see me.”
Gwen knit her forehead in perplexity.
“I have written, and she has not answered,” she said. “I don’t know what to make of her. I must go and see her.”
“Not yet,” he said, and she looked up in surprise. His face, however, expressed nothing.
“I wrote to her, and she answered it,” he continued, “and I do not want her to be worried about me for the present. Stay away for a little while, Gwen. I think she would rather you did.”
So Gwen possessed her soul in patience for three weeks, to please Lawrence, and then went upon an unexpected errand.
Paddy was roaming about restlessly that dreary winter afternoon at the beginning of February when Gwen came. She had been out in the morning, and she kept trying to make up her mind to go out again for something to do, but instead she continued to roam about with that odd feeling of unrest, quite unable to settle down to anything.
Eileen and her mother had come back to London again now, but only until the spring quarter, when, the lease of their house was up, and they hoped to have done with London for good.