'I was with you all through to-night....'
Their eyes met. Again there was nothing but they two. All pretence, all mummery had vanished. Life had become pure and strong, more rich and wonderful even than the play in which, baffled by the chances of life, she had striven to live.
'To-morrow,' she said, 'I am going to the bookshop at half-past twelve.'
He bowed and left her, and meeting Mr Clott or Cumberland on the stairs of his house he had the satisfaction of shaking him until his teeth rattled, and of telling him that Mr Charles Mann had gone abroad for an indefinite period.
XVIII
LOVE
The late September sun shone sweetly down upon Charing Cross Road, and its beams stole into the bookshop where the bookseller, in his shirt sleeves, sat wrestling with the accounts which he struggled to keep accurately. He hated them. Of all books the most detestable are account books. What has a man who trades in mind to do with money? Far better is it to have good books stolen than to keep them lying dusty on the shelf.
The bookseller chuckled to himself. The newspapers were full of praises of his 'young leddy,' though she could never be so wonderful and like a good fairy in the play-acting as she was when she walked into his shop bringing sweetness and light.... She had not been in for some time, and he had been a little worried about her. He was glad to know that it was only work that had kept her away. He had been half afraid that there might be 'something up' between her and that damned, silent Rodd, who had nothing in the world but a few bees in his bonnet. The bookseller, being a simple soul, wanted her to marry the Lord, to end the tale as all good heroines should, and he had even gone so far as to address imaginary parcels of books to her Ladyship.
Charing Cross Road was at its oddest and friendliest on this day when all London rang with Clara's fame, and the only place in which it found no echo was her own heart.