“What if it were true?” She clenched her hands and fought the question. It could not be true; why worry? Yet he had never made the slightest suggestion of marrying her. She remembered that, but scorned it.
Why should he? There had been nothing lover-like between them until the previous Saturday; and of course had there been any one else, it would have been so easy to go on the same and make no change that particular afternoon.
Finding what comfort she could out of these thoughts, she fell at last into a troubled sleep.
The following afternoon, in fulfilment of her promise, she went up to Holloway from the office. Doris was out, and Ethel not home yet, but the door was opened to her by a gaunt stranger, who said:
“Come in. This is one of my days. I’m in charge this afternoon.”
Hal looked into the angular face, which appeared to her as if it had been roughly hewn with a chisel, by some one who was a mere amateur, and she could not repress a little smile.
“I don’t think I’ve met you before. Are you—are you—a friend of Mr. Hayward’s?”
“Well, he’s a friend of mine, if that will do as well. I’m generally know here as G. The letter isn’t stamped on my face, but it’s on the door of my flat, and that’s much the same.”
She stood aside for Hal to pass down the passage, adding grimly as Hal loitered, with rather an amused, engaging expression:
“I don’t stand for much more than a door, with a G on it, as I often tell Mr. Hayward, but I suppose it’s all right.”