Meanwhile, her love for him was growing. The philosophic calmness vanished and gave place to pain, a dull, aching pain, almost physical.
A pain that only Hellier could relieve. He, in London, was suffering from an exactly similar pain, that only she could relieve, which condition, affecting two people at the same time, constitutes the disease—love.
He left the Langham about half-past ten, and, taking a cab, drove in the direction of Kensington.
He wished to see the place of the tragedy; he had no earthly idea of what he should do when he got there, he had only the fixed determination to do something. Often, when we have no idea of what we are going to do, a whole host of ideas on the subject in question are forming themselves in the sub-conscious part of our brains.
He dismissed the cab in the High Street and took his way on foot to St James’s Road.
A small crowd, constantly drifting away and as constantly renewed, stood before the house.
Hellier mixed with it and listened to its comments. Then, walking up St James’s Road, he examined the houses with a critical eye.
Klein was an artist. Great as his talents might be, he was unknown, a Bohemian; and these upper middle-class houses, these little gardens so carefully tended, the road itself and the atmosphere of the place were the very antithesis of everything Bohemian.
He turned from St James’s Road into Lorenzo Road, which, did places breed and multiply, might have been St James’s Road’s twin brother.
Pursuing Lorenzo Road, he arrived at St Ann’s Road.